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

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Through the dry phases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.
Ayn Rand
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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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Collectivism answers: The power of society is unlimited. Society may make any laws it wishes, and force them upon anyone in any manner it wishes.
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Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
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Most American men are repressors.
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Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man’s character.
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
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Love is our response to our highest values.
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I think. I am. I will.
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Ever since Kant divorced reason from reality, his intellectual descendants have been diligently widening the breach.
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When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter if I am right, he will learn if I am wrong, I will one of us will win, but both will profit.
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I am only concerned with politics so I may see the day when I don't have to be concerned with politics.
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Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.
Ayn Rand
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The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind
Ayn Rand
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Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
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Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done.
Ayn Rand
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That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth recreating in art.
Ayn Rand
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I am unwilling to be wholly good—and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
Ayn Rand
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As long as men are free to speak, a small, rational minority will always prevail over an irrational majority.
Ayn Rand