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Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.

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
Men
Entity
Life
Sovereign
Rational
Independent
Inalienable
Regard
Regards
Nature
Derived
Right
Possesses
Every
Individualism

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The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world
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My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
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The more propaganda . . . conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they’ll drive into capitalism’s coffin.
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For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
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Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
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Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Ayn Rand
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Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property-by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
Ayn Rand
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Live a life as a monument to your soul.
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Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect? Yes. My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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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.
Ayn Rand
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I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it.
Ayn Rand
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America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
Ayn Rand
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Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
Ayn Rand
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There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.
Ayn Rand
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The government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.
Ayn Rand
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Mysticism requires the notion of the unknowable, which is revealed to some and withheld from others this divides men into those who feel guilt and those who cash in on it.
Ayn Rand
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Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else
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Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.
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The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Ayn Rand
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Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
Ayn Rand