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The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word 'selfishness' is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual 'package-deal,' which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.

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
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It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious
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By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
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There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
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There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
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We didn't really have to take everything so seriously, did we?
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Great men can't be ruled.
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every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
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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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Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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There are two side to every issue.
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It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.
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