Quote

Compromise does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody it does not lead to any general fulfillment, but to general frustration those who try to become everything to all people end up by not being anything to anyone.

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
Become
Frustration
Doe
Fulfillment
Anything
Compromise
Everything
General
Trying
Lead
People
Everybody
Anyone
Ends
Satisfy

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Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart
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That which exists possesses identity he could keep it out of existence by refusing to identify it.
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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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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
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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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For they have nothing to fight me with, save the brute force of their numbers. I have my mind.
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Never ask people about your work.
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Statism needs war a free country does not. Statism survives by looting a free country survives by producing.
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Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done.
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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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Married people dont look like they have bedrooms on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both...Not both.
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Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
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Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through.
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The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
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If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.
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Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think... The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind.
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She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.
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