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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
Happy
Lives
Others
Cannot
Give
Giving
Make
Men
Demand

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Faith is the wors curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.
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She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.
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Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
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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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Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
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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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I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
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Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.
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She thought: at this moment, the glass stem between his fingers feels just like the one between mine. We have this much in common.
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A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
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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.
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Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.
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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.
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A good quotation must be a complete entity. It must be like a headline - sharp, clear, whole.
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Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.
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Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
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If the truth shall kill them, let them die.
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To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
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An emotion as much tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something.
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Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
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