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The mark of an honest man... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.

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
Mark
Says
Honest
Means
Mean
Men

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
Ayn Rand
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Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
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You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live
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Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
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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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There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.
Ayn Rand
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The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
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No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
Ayn Rand
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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.'
Ayn Rand
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Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
Ayn Rand
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
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Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.
Ayn Rand
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Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
Ayn Rand
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We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
Ayn Rand
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One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Ayn Rand
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Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.
Ayn Rand
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Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
Ayn Rand
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If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed.
Ayn Rand
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There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.
Ayn Rand
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Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.
Ayn Rand