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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.

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
Live
Escape
Nothing
Independence
Thinking
Responsibility
Hitter
Life
Politics
Pinch
Help
Substitute
Fact
Substitutes
Helping
Judgement
Facts
Recognition

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
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As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.
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The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.
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Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.
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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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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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Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight
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To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
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What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think.
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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.
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When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.
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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
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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.
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Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
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Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
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Ordinary human concern for human distress does not manifest itself ordinarily in the form of a gun aimed at the wallets and earnings of one's neighbors.
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It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
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The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO.
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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.
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