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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Ayn Rand
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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
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The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
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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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Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
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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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Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
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I take no pride in hopeless longing I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.
Ayn Rand
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In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
Ayn Rand
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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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The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.
Ayn Rand
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Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
Ayn Rand
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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
Ayn Rand
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You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated
Ayn Rand
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I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
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Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
Ayn Rand
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I can say-not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological , ethical, political and esthetic roots-that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.
Ayn Rand