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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.

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
Independence
Genius
Freedom
Must

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
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The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
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whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
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The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
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Selfishness does not mean only to do things for one's self. One may do things, affecting others, for his own pleasure and benefit. This is not immoral, but the highest of morality.
Ayn Rand
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This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.
Ayn Rand
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Happiness is not something you have in your hands it's something you carry in your heart. Happiness is one thing that multiplies by division. Happiness is that peculiar sensation you acquire when you are too busy to be miserable. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.
Ayn Rand
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Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras whenever it fell, so did mankind.
Ayn Rand
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The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.
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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The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Ayn Rand
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Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
Ayn Rand
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The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.
Ayn Rand
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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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Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
Ayn Rand
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I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.
Ayn Rand
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What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: I don't think of him. And the more I see, the less I think.
Ayn Rand
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The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
Ayn Rand
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Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion.
Ayn Rand