Quote

The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology.

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
Tomorrow
Retreat
Side
Officials
Uncontested
Sides
Ideology
Dint
Today
Suddenly
Absurdities
Come
Accepted
Slogans
Country
Degrees
Declared
Constant
Official
Pressure
Absurdity

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Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper
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Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
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Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
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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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My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.
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The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights.
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The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.
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The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
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The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.
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Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it - that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.
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A free mind and a free market are corollaries.
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Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.
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Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
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Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man.
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He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.
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That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
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Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.
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Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach.
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