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You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

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
People
Build
Write
Live
Writing
Way

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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
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I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.
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There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men.
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All work is an act of philosophy.
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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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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Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.
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The end does not justify the means. No one's rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.
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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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I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
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Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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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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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.
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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
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If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money either in matter or in spirit.
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Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.
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If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.
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It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
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Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.
Ayn Rand