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Humor is not an unconditional virtue its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.
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
Moral
Vices
Often
Object
Used
Laugh
Camouflage
Character
Objects
Contemptible
Good
Depends
Hideous
Laughing
Unconditional
Humor
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Virtue
Vice
More quotes by Ayn Rand
And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: EGO
Ayn Rand
I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.
Ayn Rand
Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality-not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.
Ayn Rand
It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.
Ayn Rand
Collectivism requires self-sacrifice, the subordination of one's interests to those of others.
Ayn Rand
A story is an end in itself. It is not written to teach, sell, explain or destroy anything. It is not written even to entertain. It is written as a man is born - an organic whole, dictated only by its own laws and its own necessity - an end in itself, not a means to an end.
Ayn Rand
You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.
Ayn Rand
Today we have discovered the word that could not be said. I
Ayn Rand
It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
Ayn Rand
There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production.
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Nobody has ever given a reason why men should be their brother's keepers.
Ayn Rand
If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as social gains, if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as selfish greed.
Ayn Rand
A rational man is guided by his thinking - by a process of Reason - not by his feelings and desires.
Ayn Rand
A 'whim' is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause.
Ayn Rand
Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth, the man who would make his fortune no matter where he started.
Ayn Rand
Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered.
Ayn Rand
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Ayn Rand
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.
Ayn Rand
I made my fortune by being able to spot a certain kind of man.
Ayn Rand
When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him, by force.
Ayn Rand