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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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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
Office
Eyes
Eye
Write
Done
Writing
Boxes

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
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I have no faith at all. I only hold convictions.
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Freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate.
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A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him.
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It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious
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Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?
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A story is an end in itself. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written even to entertain. It is written as a man is born - an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity - an end in itself, not a means to an end.
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The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
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The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
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He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done.
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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.
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We are one...alone...and only...and we love you who are one...alone...and only. We looked into each other's eyes and we knew the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly. And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
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There are two side to every issue.
Ayn Rand
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When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Do not consider Collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand
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Politically, the goal of today’s dominant trend is statism. Philosophically, the goal is the obliteration of reason psychologically, it is the erosion of ambition.
Ayn Rand
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Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
Ayn Rand
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The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
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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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