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2676c0a
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Dean] "My dear fellow, who will let you?" [Roark] "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?" --
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Ayn Rand |
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e742960
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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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life
inspirational
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Ayn Rand |
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ba7ad44
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If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
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shrugged
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Ayn Rand |
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69ba6ef
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I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.
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live
mortality
life
fountainhead
die
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Ayn Rand |
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863b87d
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Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
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Ayn Rand |
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b630990
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People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked...The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on...There are no white lies, there is only the blackest..
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truth
rearden
victim
slave
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Ayn Rand |
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201d4ba
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To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I"."
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self-awareness
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Ayn Rand |
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ba103e3
|
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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Ayn Rand |
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6920ad3
|
I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.
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philosophy
taggart
objectivism
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Ayn Rand |
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08951f5
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The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
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willful-ignorance
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Ayn Rand |
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dfc3989
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If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I...don't know. What...could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug."
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Ayn Rand |
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599c60f
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The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
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Ayn Rand |
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50fc388
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A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine ..
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Ayn Rand |
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08dd92d
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Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.
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Ayn Rand |
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fe99f64
|
He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
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inspirational
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Ayn Rand |
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f6cfb9a
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If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It's no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She's earned it, it's a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices i..
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Ayn Rand |
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9d91f94
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My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
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happiness
inspirational
salvation
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Ayn Rand |
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eed97ad
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To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
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life
self
soul
|
Ayn Rand |
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d9f5401
|
Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.
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Ayn Rand |
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aa964e4
|
Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
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philosophy
taggart
objectivism
|
Ayn Rand |
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2eaa982
|
I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.
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Ayn Rand |
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69cbe8f
|
The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat ..
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indecisiveness
conflict-resolution
compromise
judgement
evil
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Ayn Rand |
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d1a8d4d
|
Don't fool yourself, my dear. You're much worse than a bitch. You're a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.
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saints
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Ayn Rand |
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09bb0b5
|
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
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men-and-women
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Ayn Rand |
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d7b9855
|
She did not know the nature of her loneliness. The only words that named it were: This is not the world I expected.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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b530dba
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But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perha..
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Ayn Rand |
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5bb055c
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You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated
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Ayn Rand |
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c9edef5
|
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper,..
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Ayn Rand |
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4b10f77
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Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - pres..
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happiness
prestige
society
|
Ayn Rand |
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11ee596
|
I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you...Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference
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selfish-love
obsession
|
Ayn Rand |
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b324546
|
Who is John Galt?
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philosophy
galt
taggart
objectivism
opening-lines
|
Ayn Rand |
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68d4985
|
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.
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philosophy
taggart
objectivism
|
Ayn Rand |
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bafeb15
|
What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.
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Ayn Rand |
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02957aa
|
There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.
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understanding
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Ayn Rand |
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9695839
|
It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: ..
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virtue
competence
nobility
self-respect
|
Ayn Rand |
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d2bc576
|
Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.
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integrity
moral-courage
|
Ayn Rand |
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87bd2e9
|
Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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94bf3f6
|
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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|
Ayn Rand |
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8b31d7a
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I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot bell..
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new-york-city
|
Ayn Rand |
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34a5ce4
|
There is no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who don't care to do it.
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|
Ayn Rand |
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87d3de8
|
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do n..
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responsibility
morality
knowledge
evil
|
Ayn Rand |
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41a0e96
|
Patience is always rewarded and romance is always round the corner!
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|
Ayn Rand |
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73f2947
|
Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.
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philosophy
taggart
objectivism
|
Ayn Rand |
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fec5bb6
|
If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.
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Ayn Rand |