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Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

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
Make
Men
Demand
Happy
Lives
Others
Cannot
Give
Giving

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An irresponsible person is a person who makes vague promises, then breaks his word, blames it on circumstances and expects other people to forgive it.
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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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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.
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It is a sin to write this.
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The more neurotic and evasive a person is, the shorter the range of his interests.
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Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.
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My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.
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We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
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This god, this one word: I.
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Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a Man's soul. It's task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.
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A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom! It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose!
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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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Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
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When I listen to a symphony I love, I don't get from it what the composer got. His 'Yes' was different from mine. He could have no concern for mine and no exact conception of it. That answer is too personal to each man. But in giving himself what he wanted, he gave me a great experience.
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
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Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind.
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Government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
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When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.
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People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
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