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As we gain knowledge, we do not become more certain, we become certain of more.

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
Gain
Gains
Knowledge
Become
Certain

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.
Ayn Rand
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If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man's only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.
Ayn Rand
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I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Ayn Rand
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Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.
Ayn Rand
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand
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every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
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Every honest man lives for himself. Every man worth calling a man lives for himself. The one who doesn't - doesn't live at all.
Ayn Rand
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I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'
Ayn Rand
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
Ayn Rand
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To deal with men by force is as impractical as to deal with nature by persuasion.
Ayn Rand
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Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.
Ayn Rand
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When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.
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 am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
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.
Ayn Rand
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Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.
Ayn Rand
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To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
Ayn Rand
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Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably the man who respects it has earned it.
Ayn Rand
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To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.
Ayn Rand
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One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
Ayn Rand