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

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Dominique as Gail looks at her ... there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence.
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You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
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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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The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.
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Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
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Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
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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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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
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To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
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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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The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.
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Life is a value to be bought and thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.
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To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight
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Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
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There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.
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I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
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Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart
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Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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Man is a being with free will therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.
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