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Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future. We do know, but it can't be best until you know it.

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
Rely
Knowledge
Future
Best

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.
Ayn Rand
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Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?
Ayn Rand
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She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
Ayn Rand
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A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
Ayn Rand
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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
Ayn Rand
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There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.
Ayn Rand
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If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man.
Ayn Rand
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I want to know that I've accomplished something. I want to feel that it had some meaning. At the last summing up, I want to be sure it wasn't all-for nothing.
Ayn Rand
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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
Ayn Rand
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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
Ayn Rand
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but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
Ayn Rand
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That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
Ayn Rand
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.
Ayn Rand
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When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
Ayn Rand