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Thinking men cannot be ruled ambitious men do not stagnate.

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
Thinking
Stagnate
Ruled
Ambitious
Cannot
Men

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And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.
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I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'
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Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.
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Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
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Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.
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Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.
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If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.
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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
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Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
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Don't consider our interests or desires. You have no duty to anyone but yourself.
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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Style is not an end in itself, it is only a means to an end - the means of telling a story.
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I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
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The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.
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This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
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