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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.

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
Brutes
Default
Perish
Civilization
Winning
Doe

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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
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Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
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There's nothing of any importance in life — except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value.
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A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
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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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If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
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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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She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last awareness, before she surrendered the responsibility of consciousness, was the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent, where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no right to seek.
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I guard my treasures: my thoughts, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.
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Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably the man who respects it has earned it.
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If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with others, do not call yourself an Objectivist give proper authorship credit for the parts you agree with
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Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?
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John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.
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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.
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Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
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