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One must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision...No discussion, cooperation, agreement, or understanding is possible among men who substitute emotion for proof.

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
Thoughts
Substitutes
Emotion
Cooperation
Full
Agreement
Possible
Clarity
Understanding
Discussion
Must
Emotions
Differentiate
Men
Proof
Precision
Among
Substitute

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I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
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Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom a free mind and a free market are corollaries.
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All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.
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Guilt is altruism's stock in trade, and the inducing of guilt is its only means of self-perpetuati on.
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There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine, that attacked (or 'limited') reason, which did not preach submission to the power of some authority.
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A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.
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Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal.
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We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.
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Faith is the commitment of one's consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof. A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.
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Don't rely on our knowledge of what's best for your future. We do know, but it can't be best until you know it.
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Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.
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Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.
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Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
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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.
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
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I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
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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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Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.
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