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Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing.

Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand
Age: 77 †
Born: 1905
Born: February 2
Died: 1982
Died: March 6
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
St. Petersburg
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
Valuing
Fountainhead
Basic
Function
Single
Values
Soul

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If you want to save capitalism there is only one type of argument that you should adopt, the only one that has ever won in any moral issue: the argument from self-esteem. Check your premises, convince yourself of the rightness of your cause, then fight for capitalism with full, moral certainty.
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
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The attack on selfishness is an attack on man's self-esteem to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
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An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
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A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
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Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?
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You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.
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The social system based on and consonant with the altruist morality-with the code of self-sacrifice- is socialism, in all or any of its variants: fascism, Nazism, communism. All of them treat man as a sacrificial animal to be immolated for the benefit of the group, the tribe, the society, the state.
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There are no evil thoughts except one the refusal to think.
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