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The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.

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
Fingers
Concert
Giving
Exercise
Arrested
Kind
Development
Finger
Never
Writer
Represents
Esthetic
Like
Gives
Concerts
Acquires
Style
Acquire
Pianist
Playing
Technique
Exercises
Beautiful
Brilliant
Develops

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.
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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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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.
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You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
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Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work, pride is the result.
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Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.
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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.
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To say 'I love you' one must first be able to say the 'I.'
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The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead
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Namely, if I am challenging the base of all these institutions, I'm challenging the moral code of altruism. The precept that man's moral duty is to live for others. That man must sacrifice himself to others. Which is the present day morality.
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Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
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Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.
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The mind is the attribute of man. When man is born, he comes into existence with only one weapon with him--The reasoning mind.
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.
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There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
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Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
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That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
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The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind.
Ayn Rand