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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
Exercise
Arrested
Giving
Finger
Kind
Development
Represents
Esthetic
Never
Writer
Concerts
Acquires
Like
Gives
Acquire
Pianist
Style
Technique
Exercises
Playing
Brilliant
Develops
Beautiful
Fingers
Concert
Nothing

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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of evil.
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All work is an act of philosophy.
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If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.
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A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.
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He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.
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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.
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Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
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Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property-by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.
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There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days-the conviction that ideas matter . . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters . . .
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There's nothing of any importance in life-except how well you do your work.
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A mystic is a man who treats his feelings as tools of cognition.
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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.
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The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way.
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Rights are not a matter of numbers - and there can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
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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.
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Faith and force ... are corollaries: every period of history dominated by mysticism, was a period of statism, of dictatorship, of tyranny.
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My dear fellow, who will let you? That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?
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I am interested in politics only in order to secure and protect freedom.
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