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Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state ' and nothing else

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
Nothing
Means
Employers
Mean
Else
Context
Men
Political
Provide
Nature
Prosperity
Coercive
Power
Laws
Landlord
Doe
Law
Employer
States
State
Automatic
Government
Freedom
Coercion

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.
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By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
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My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
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Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Ayn Rand
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What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially.
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
Ayn Rand
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It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.
Ayn Rand
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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.
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...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason.
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It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.
Ayn Rand
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One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.
Ayn Rand
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Capitalism and altruism are incompatible they are philosophical opposites they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
Ayn Rand
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He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved.
Ayn Rand
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Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you? He answered, Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.
Ayn Rand
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The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
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I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it.
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
Ayn Rand
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We the Living is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life - using the word 'sanctity' not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of 'supreme value.'
Ayn Rand