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Degrees do not matter... one does not bargain about inches of 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
Doe
Matter
Bargain
Bargains
Inches
Degrees
Evil

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live
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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I take no pride in hopeless longing I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.
Ayn Rand
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Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.
Ayn Rand
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Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
Ayn Rand
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To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Ayn Rand
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the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race.
Ayn Rand
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in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it.
Ayn Rand
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I am an innovator. This is a term of distinction, a term of honor, rather than something to hide or apologize for. Anyone who has new or valuable ideas to offer stands outside the intellectual status quo. But the status quo is not a stream, let alone a 'mainstream'. It is a stagnant swamp. It is the innovators who carry mankind forward.
Ayn Rand
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You were not born to be a second-hander. Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
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That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.
Ayn Rand
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A good novel is an indivisible sum every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
Ayn Rand
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I refuse to apologize for my ability -- I refuse to apologize for my success -- I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it.
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.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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There is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.
Ayn Rand
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The genius must have his freedom and his independence.
Ayn Rand
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Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.
Ayn Rand
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If a man wants love he should correct his weaknesses, or his flaws, and he may deserve it. But he cannot expect the unearned, either in love or in money either in matter or in spirit.
Ayn Rand
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I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Ayn Rand