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When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.

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
Faith
Claim
Undercuts
Reality
Claims
Absolutism
Cannot
Tools
Mystics
Reason
Longer
Distortion
Mind
Trust
Organ
Consciousness
Organs
Becomes
Rejects
Turns
Tool

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.
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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.
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It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.
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The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream.
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The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.
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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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The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology.
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Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
Ayn Rand
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Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
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Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
Ayn Rand
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It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature -- the connection between his survival and his use of reason -- that capitalism recognizes and protects.
Ayn Rand
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If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
Ayn Rand
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America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.
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but their eyes were as cold blue glass buttons.
Ayn Rand
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I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry
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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The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
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.
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If you want to feel good, be rational.
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The mark of an honest man... is that he means what he says and knows what he means.
Ayn Rand