Quote

Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account Overdrawn.'

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
Virtue
Drawn
Politics
Account
Looters
Upon
Checks
Bounces
Political
Accounts
Bounce
Victim
Marked
Paper
Victims
Watches
Check
Watch
Legal

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
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She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
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Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.
Ayn Rand
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When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.
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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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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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Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.” An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.
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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.
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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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Sacrifice is the surrender of that which you value in favor of which you dont
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The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him) it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
Ayn Rand
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Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.
Ayn Rand
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There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.
Ayn Rand
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren
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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There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.
Ayn Rand
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The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
Ayn Rand