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d0ba59a
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Listen, here's something we can do: we can look at the moon, sometimes - and, you know, it's the same moon everywhere - and we would be looking at the same thing together that way, you see?
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Ayn Rand |
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684609a
|
There is no such thing as "the right to enslave".A nation can do it , just as a man can become a criminal - but neither can do it by right. It doesn't matter in this context, whether a nation was enslaved by force (like soviet Russia), or by vote (like Nazi Germany)."
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enslave
rights
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Ayn Rand |
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8999660
|
And what is the state but a servant and a convenience for a large number of people, just like the electric light and the plumbing system? And wouldn't it be preposterous to claim that men must exist for their plumbing, not the plumbing for the men?
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Ayn Rand |
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b00f97c
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This is said to civilized men who are to venture into countries where sacred cows are fed, while children are left to starve - where female infants are killed or abandoned by the roadside- where men go blind, medical help being forbidden by their religion - where women are mutilated, to insure their fidelity - where unspeakable tortures are ceremonially inflicted on prisoners - where cannibalism is practiced. Are these the 'cultural riches'..
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Ayn Rand |
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b761e91
|
If you see us among scores of women, will you look upon us? We shall look upon you, Liberty 5-3000, if we see you among all the women of the earth.
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love
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Ayn Rand |
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feda5f4
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A man of self respect doesn't turn into a milch cow for anybody.
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Ayn Rand |
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015fe08
|
Do you think integrity is the monopoly of the artist? And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow o..
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Ayn Rand |
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75eda2f
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In spiritual issues--(by "spiritual" I mean: "pertaining to man's consciousness")--a trader is a man who does not seek to be loved for his weaknesses or flaws, only for his virtues, and who does not grant his love to the weaknesses or the flaws of others, only to their virtues."
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Ayn Rand |
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667b300
|
Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escap..
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virtue
man
mind
good
morality
reason
life
philosophy
truth
wisdom
john-galt
pursuit-of-happiness
objectivism
rational
think
thinking
morals
values
evil
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Ayn Rand |
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0a6822d
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The adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging; it was ineptitude--a gray spread of cotton that deemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way.
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Ayn Rand |
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b866186
|
Every achievement of man is a value in itself, but it is also a stepping-stone to greater achievements and values. Life is growth; not to move forward, is to fall backward; life remains life, only so long as it advances. Every step upward opens to man a wider range of action and achievement--and creates the need for that action and achievement. There is no final, permanent "plateau". The problem of survival is never "solved", once and for a..
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Ayn Rand |
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1033084
|
When man discovered how to make fire to keep himself warm, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to fashion a bow and arrow, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he discovered how to build a shelter out of stone, then out of brick, then out of glass and steel, his need of thought and effort was not ended; when he moved his life expectancy from nineteen to thirty to forty to sixty to seventy, his ..
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Ayn Rand |
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958e313
|
Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
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virtue
man
mind
good
morality
choice
reason
life
philosophy
john-galt
pursuit-of-happiness
objectivism
rational
think
thinking
morals
values
evil
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Ayn Rand |
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ca467f5
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The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God-- others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man's nature.
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Ayn Rand |
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47e7cbd
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So you think money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim you product by tears, or of looters, who can take it from you ..
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money
morality
philosophy
money-issues
root-of-money
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Ayn Rand |
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7253668
|
Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive--to be noticed, liked, admired?" "--by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance--the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought--they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't need it."
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the-fountainhead
selfish
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Ayn Rand |
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cc62943
|
It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll b..
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Ayn Rand |
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2f0a100
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I refuse to apologize for my ability--I refuse to apologize for my success--I refuse to apologize for my money.
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hank-rearden
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Ayn Rand |
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fef8e1d
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Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds. I am not a sacrifice on their altars.
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Ayn Rand |
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1b854dd
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Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them--because they don't exist within him and that's the..
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independence
the-fountainhead
independent
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Ayn Rand |
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d9d8a21
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Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious
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Ayn Rand |
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2b2c996
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Victor Hugo: "If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away."
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Ayn Rand |
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f35c547
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She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance.
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love
howard-roark
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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4fcb3da
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This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
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Ayn Rand |
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3ba6d89
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Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do not send us away from you.
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love
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Ayn Rand |
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a34a789
|
They say sound never dies, but travels on in space--what happens to a man's heartbeats?--so many of them in fifty-six years--could they be gathered again, in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more?
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Ayn Rand |
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454b363
|
whose steps were a restless substitute for flight.
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Ayn Rand |
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c8f6596
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He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are waiting for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will g..
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Ayn Rand |
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ae46311
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It's easier to donate a few thousands 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: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
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gail-wynand
the-fountainhead
competence
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Ayn Rand |
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e476c8a
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Wasn't it evil to wish without moving- or to move without aim?
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Ayn Rand |
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fea9b82
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For our face and body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt not pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straigth and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear with this being.
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freedom
individual
pride
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Ayn Rand |
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171fa97
|
It's because it makes no difference to her at all whether I speak or not; as if I didn't exist and never had existed... the thing more inconceivable than one's death--never to have been born...
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Ayn Rand |
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83648ad
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Only if one feels immensely important she had told him, can one feel truly light.
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Ayn Rand |
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0243343
|
We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth.
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science
truth
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Ayn Rand |
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69ecbe3
|
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it
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Ayn Rand |
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e14e36e
|
His smile had an attractive quality, the smile of a man of the world who used it, not to cover his words, but to stress the audacity of expressing a sincere emotion.
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Ayn Rand |
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4f7edc7
|
And no power on earth could tell whether their blankly indifferent eyes were shutters protecting hidden treasures at the bottom of shafts no longer to be mined, or were merely gaping holes of the parasite's emptiness never to be filled.
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Ayn Rand |
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aef516f
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There's something I would like to understand. And I don't think anyone can explain it. . . There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that t..
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your-life
value
state
|
Ayn Rand |
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bccdbe3
|
If some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing. Such looters are parasites incapable of survival, who exist by destroying those who are capable, those who are pursuing a course of ac..
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Ayn Rand |
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f8e60da
|
We went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops.
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Ayn Rand |
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7659fd3
|
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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Ayn Rand |
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7c6a761
|
She found a deep sense of fitness in the fact that here, among people, they should be strangers; strangers and enemies. She thought, these people can think of many things he and I are to each other--except what we are. It made the moments she remembered greater, the moments not touched by the sight of others, by the words of others, not even by their knowledge.
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Ayn Rand |
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d83cc15
|
Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.
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philosophy
ethics
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Ayn Rand |
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aa080d3
|
She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her, toward other children and adults alike. She took it as a regrettable accident, to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull. She had caught a glimpse of another world and she knew that it existed somewhere, the world that had created trains, bridges, telegraph wires and signal lights winking in the night. She had to wait,..
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Ayn Rand |