Quote

If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.

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
Always
Story
Like
Point
Understand
Indignantly
Tell
Declares
Doesn
Amateur
Stories
Beside
Really
Writer
Good
Happened

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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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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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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She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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Never ask people about your work.
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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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The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.
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You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live
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There are no evil thoughts except one the refusal to think.
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What is morality, she asked. Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
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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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The degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.
Ayn Rand
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This is the age othe common man, they tell us-a title which any man may claim to the extent osuch distinction as he has managed not to achieve.
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The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.
Ayn Rand
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There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
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Individualism regards man-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being.
Ayn Rand
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
Ayn Rand
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The attack on selfishness is an attack on man's self-esteem to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
Ayn Rand
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Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'
Ayn Rand
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But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life.
Ayn Rand