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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices.
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If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.
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And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. 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
Ayn Rand
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There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.
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The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.
Ayn Rand
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An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
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You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.
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It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.
Ayn Rand
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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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Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
Ayn Rand
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A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
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In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
Ayn Rand
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If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism.
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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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A rational man knows-or makes it a point to discover-the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come.
Ayn Rand
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That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
Ayn Rand
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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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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Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand