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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.

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
Results
Central
Purpose
Productive
Values
Rational
Reason
Determine
Integrates
Work
Result
Precondition
Men
Pride
Integrating
Life
Value
Hierarchy
Source
Determines

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every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
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To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else.
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Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
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Action without thought is mindlessness, and thought without action is hypocritical.
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Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
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When you are asked to love everybody indiscriminately, that is to love people without any standard, to love them regardless of whether they have any value or virtue, you are asked to love nobody.
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In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.
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It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.
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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras whenever it fell, so did mankind.
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Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality
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Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason.
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Life is the reward of virtue. And happiness is the goal and reward of life.
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You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated
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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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Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.
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Allies never trust each other, but that doesn't spoil their effectiveness.
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