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The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.

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
Accepting
Moral
Obeyed
Reason
Accepts
Commandments
Forced
Rational
Chosen
Understood

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Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy . . . Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values, and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
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In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
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Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
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It's not about who's going to let me it's about who's going to stop me.
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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
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She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
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It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.
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Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
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I agree that [marriage] should be treated like a business deal. But every business deal has to have its own terms and its own kind of currency.
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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
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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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Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.
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An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
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The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights.
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Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
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To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
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