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7b0df11
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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 your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.
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Ayn Rand |
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882a109
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Don't think of them now. 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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0cf976e
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He demonstrated that there was no such thing as free will, since men's creative impulses were determined, as all else, by the economic structure of the epoch in which they lived.
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Ayn Rand |
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09bb667
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There is no necessity for pain-why, then, is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity?
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Ayn Rand |
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7a1ce1c
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Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn.
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Ayn Rand |
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35eb70e
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I wish I had the power to tell them that the despair of their hearts was not to be final, and their night was not without hope. For the battle they lost can never be lost. For that which they died to save can never perish. Through all the darkness, through all the shame of which men are capable, the spirit of man will remain alive on this earth. It may sleep, but it will awaken. It may wear chains, but it will break through. And man will go..
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freedom
darkness
overcoming
choices
lost
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Ayn Rand |
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6670fda
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She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her...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.
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people
dagny-taggart
boring
dull
indifference
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Ayn Rand |
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958bb5e
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The course led them to the moment when, in answer to the highest of one's values, one's spirit makes one's body become the tribute, recasting it--as proof, as sanction, as reward--into a single sensation of such intensity of joy that no other sanction of one's existence is necessary.
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Ayn Rand |
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ccbebd0
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No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind--because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life.
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life
dagny-taggart
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Ayn Rand |
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2239ede
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It is eminently reasonable that men should seek to associate with those who share their convictions and values. It is impossible to deal or even to communicate with men whose ideas are fundamentally opposed to one's own (and one should be free not to deal with them). All proper associations are formed or joined by individual choice and on conscious, intellectual grounds (philosophical, political, professional, etc.)--not by the physiologica..
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Ayn Rand |
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8785b75
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Your subconscious is like a computer--more complex a computer than men can build--and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance--and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in t..
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Ayn Rand |
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3f74c7d
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When a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality..
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Ayn Rand |
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1f3029c
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And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits. It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before us. We are to speak. We are to give its goal, its highest meaning to all..
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Ayn Rand |
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d02dc80
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If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the distinctions of the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money". No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wea..
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Ayn Rand |
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75e52e4
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We asked so many questions that the Teachers forbade it.
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Ayn Rand |
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748f19b
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Everything that isn't permitted by The Law is forbidden.
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Ayn Rand |
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59f8d66
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May knowledge come to us! What is this secret our heart has understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?
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secret
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Ayn Rand |
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3f02555
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The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist.
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scientific-realism
individual
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Ayn Rand |
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67b3f4a
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Whatever it was, he thought, whatever the strain and the agony, they were worth it, because they had made him reach this day
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Ayn Rand |
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3091dc7
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In times like these, when their fat little comforts are threatened, you may be sure that science is the first thing men will sacrifice.
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Ayn Rand |
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3faa2ce
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But if my love of truth is left as my only possession, then the greater the loss behind me, the greater the pride I may take in the price I have paid for that love. Then the wreckage will not become a funeral mount above me, but will serve as a height I have climbed to attain a wider field of vision.
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Ayn Rand |
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9c425e3
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Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies...It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.
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virtue
man
mind
good
morality
reason
life
philosophy
john-galt
pursuit-of-happiness
objectivism
think
thinking
morals
values
evil
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Ayn Rand |
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6bc9e13
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An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection--to the conceptual identification of your inner states--you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. ..
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Ayn Rand |
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6c377d2
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I always know what I want. And when you know what you want - you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don't know. I've forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn't matter, so long as you move.
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Ayn Rand |
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2a3d73d
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My hands . . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . My forest . . . This earth of mine . . .
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Ayn Rand |
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783bf4e
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Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the loadstone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.
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Ayn Rand |
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52c1a27
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Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men.
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happy
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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30ec85e
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We are one in all and all in one. There are no men but only the great WE, One, indivisible and forever."--"
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Ayn Rand |
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7c1e0bb
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And because she worshipped joy, Kira seldom laughed and did not go to see comedies in theaters. And because she felt a profound rebellion against the weighty, the tragic, the solemn, Kira had a solemn reverence for those songs of defiant gaiety.
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rebellion
joy
defiance
reverence
tragic
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Ayn Rand |
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7f59f06
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Moments later, when she saw the look of control returning to his face, she said, "Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth."
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Ayn Rand |
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5b5bdfe
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He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority--and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame--and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth--and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He ..
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Ayn Rand |
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e50cb38
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Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.
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beauty
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Ayn Rand |
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6383981
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Oh, but I am quite resigned to taking second place in the shadow of my husband. I am humbly aware that the wife of a great man has to be contented with reflected glory - don't you think so Miss Taggart?" "No," said Dagny, "I don't."
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Ayn Rand |
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25e8574
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When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of newspaper owners took him aside-at a city charity affair which all had to attend-and reproached him for what they called hid debasement of the public taste. "It is not my function" said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public, I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best polic..
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public-opinion
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Ayn Rand |
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2482d79
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What subjectivism is in the realm of ethics, collectivism is in the realm of politics. Just as the notion that "anything I do is right because I chose to do it," is not a moral principle, but a negation of morality--so the notion that "anything society does is right because society chose to do it," is not a moral principle, but a negation of moral principles an the banishment of morality from social issues."
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Ayn Rand |
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b9392ac
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If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
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Ayn Rand |
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c07f372
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But we, Equality 7-2521, are glad to be living. If this is a vice, then we wish no virtue.
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Ayn Rand |
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e24e6b6
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The theory that holds "good blood" or "bad blood" as a moral-intellectual criterion , can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice."
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Ayn Rand |
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73463c3
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There are two aspects of man's existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art. I am referring here to romantic love, in the serious meaning of that term--as distinguished from the superficial infatuations of those whose sense of life is devoid of any consistent values, i.e., of any lasting emotions other than fear. Love is a response to values. It is with a person's sense of life that one falls in..
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love
cognition
emotions
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Ayn Rand |
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611c3ca
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I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs.
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reason
logic
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Ayn Rand |
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9f9df66
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It's not just the kind of work you do; I wouldn't care, if you were an exhibitionist who's being different as a stunt, as a lark, just to attract attention to himself. It's a smart racket, to oppose the crowd and amuse it and collect admission to the side show. If you did that, I wouldn't worry. But it's not that. You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that's the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. Y..
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Ayn Rand |
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14d329c
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she had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found.
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howard-roark
the-fountainhead
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Ayn Rand |
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be1d63a
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Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own-they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal-for a mind to respect and achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in l..
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Ayn Rand |
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c14a698
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No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
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happiness
john-galt
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Ayn Rand |