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When a man declares: There are no blacks and whites [in morality] he is making a psychological confession, and what he means is: I am unwilling to be wholly good - and please don't regard me as wholly evil!

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
Means
Confession
Mean
Wholly
Good
Psychological
Men
Morality
Regard
Declares
Please
Whites
Evil
Blacks
Making
Unwilling

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.
Ayn Rand
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Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.
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.
Ayn Rand
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An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.
Ayn Rand
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I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals.
Ayn Rand
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Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.
Ayn Rand
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Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.
Ayn Rand
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Civilization does not have to perish. The brutes are winning only by default.
Ayn Rand
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A reader has to be concerned only with the end result unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
Ayn Rand
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Pleasure is nought but virtue's gayer name-- I wrong her still, I rate her worth too low: Virtue the root, and pleasure is the flow'r.
Ayn Rand
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There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
Ayn Rand
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It's true that there's no such thing as free will. We can't help what we are or what we do. It's not our fault. Nobody's to blame for anything. It's all in your background ... and your glands. If you're good, that's no achievement of yours - you were lucky in your glands. If you're rotten, nobody should punish you - you were unlucky, that's all.
Ayn Rand
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Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.
Ayn Rand
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The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.
Ayn Rand
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Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?
Ayn Rand
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Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.
Ayn Rand
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All public projects are mausoleums, not always in shapes, but always in cost.
Ayn Rand
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Love is our response to our highest values. Love is self-enjoyment. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values.
Ayn Rand
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Morally, the promise of an impossible “right” to economic security is an infamous attempt to abrogate the concept of rights. It can and does mean only one thing: a promise to enslave the men who produce, for the benefit of those who don’t.
Ayn Rand
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Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
Ayn Rand