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Self-esteem is reliance on one's power to think... The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind.

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
Rely
Think
Esteem
Thinking
Confidence
Judgment
Power
Self
Relies
Mind
Reliance
Authentic
Men

More quotes by Ayn Rand

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It is not as late as you think. It is merely early - in the age of the rebirth of individualism.
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God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive.
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Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?
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The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
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Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
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Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man's freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men.
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That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant.
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Any group or collective, large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
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Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
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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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The most depraved type of human being ... (is) the man without a purpose.
Ayn Rand
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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.
Ayn Rand
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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
Ayn Rand
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A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
Ayn Rand
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Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion. To declare that “everybody is white” or “everybody is black” or “everybody is neither white nor black, but gray,” is not a moral judgment, but an escape from the responsibility of moral judgment.
Ayn Rand
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A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
Ayn Rand
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
Ayn Rand
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One must differentiate between one's thoughts and one's emotions with full clarity and precision...No discussion, cooperation, agreement, or understanding is possible among men who substitute emotion for proof.
Ayn Rand
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We are one...alone...and only...and we love you who are one...alone...and only. We looked into each other's eyes and we knew the breath of a miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly. And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
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In a free society, one does not have to deal with those who are irrational. One is free to avoid them.
Ayn Rand