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My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

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
Existence
Choices
Axiom
Reason
Axioms
Contained
Live
Exists
Morality
Choice
Single

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
Ayn Rand
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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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Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
Ayn Rand
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It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.
Ayn Rand
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Self-esteem is reliance on ones power to think.
Ayn Rand
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When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
Ayn Rand
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Honor is self-esteem made visible in action.
Ayn Rand
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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
Ayn Rand
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The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral.
Ayn Rand
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The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.
Ayn Rand
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
Ayn Rand
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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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Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
Ayn Rand
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you are never called upon to prove a negative. that's a law of logic.
Ayn Rand
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Ayn Rand
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We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand
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If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.
Ayn Rand
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Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
Ayn Rand
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Each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest.
Ayn Rand
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I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.
Ayn Rand