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d1c0d9c
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Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion-when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors-when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you-when y..
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Ayn Rand |
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aeb911b
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It's strange. 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 they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something t..
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Ayn Rand |
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e0b392c
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A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
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Ayn Rand |
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c3188e0
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Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
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Ayn Rand |
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a76874c
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Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one's consciousness can permit the faking of existence.
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virtue
rand
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Ayn Rand |
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b0f541d
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Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independenc..
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virtue
worth
independence
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Ayn Rand |
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910d9dd
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If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? . . . Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.
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rand
parasitism
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Ayn Rand |
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3dd62d8
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The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.
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Ayn Rand |
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881992a
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If you write a line of zeroes, it's still nothing.
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nothing
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Ayn Rand |
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81f7654
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We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.
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philosophy
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Ayn Rand |
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69747ae
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Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.
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Ayn Rand |
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be97ff1
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In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.
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Ayn Rand |
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f9d0a5f
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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.
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Ayn Rand |
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f7a9091
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There can be no compromise on moral principles.
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Ayn Rand |
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6217ca6
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I understood that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.
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human-spirit
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Ayn Rand |
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ef12465
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Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned. His own happiness is man's only moral purpose, but only his own virtue can achieve it...Life is the reward of virtue- and happiness is the goal and the reward of life. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy- a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for ..
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philosophical
philosophy
objectivism
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Ayn Rand |
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28ef81c
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John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains--and he withdrew his fire--until the day when men withdraw their vultures.
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Ayn Rand |
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0b17b97
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Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge."
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ethics
moral
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Ayn Rand |
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8db1ecc
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Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. The mind is an attribute of the individual. The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. N..
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Ayn Rand |
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05f9d7b
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Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.
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Ayn Rand |
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52a06a6
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Why no. I'm too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm an utter egotist.
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Ayn Rand |
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bd811f1
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Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An ..
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man
life
human-nature
instincts
thought
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Ayn Rand |
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7c48346
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There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and the air of the streets. Fear walks through the city, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare speak.
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Ayn Rand |
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b512d87
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There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.
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Ayn Rand |
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c1572c8
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She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not believe in suffering. She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it. She would not allow pain to become important. She had no name for the kind of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resistance came; but the words that stood as its e..
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Ayn Rand |
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1ce6ced
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She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness, yet they could let each other see it without the need of protection.
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Ayn Rand |
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2be24a5
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There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.
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Ayn Rand |
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d3e3ae6
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I am, therefore I'll think
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Ayn Rand |
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e984ef9
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Why have you been staring at me ever since we met? Because I'm not the Gail Wynand you'd heard about. You see, I love you. And love is exception-making. If you were in love you'd want to be broken, trampled, ordered, dominated, because that's the impossible, in the inconceivable for you in your relations with people. That would be the one gift, the great exception you'd want to offer the man you loved. But it wouldn't be easy for you.
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romance
love
romance-novels
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Ayn Rand |
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4e17652
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Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.
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Ayn Rand |
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b4db181
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Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.
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Ayn Rand |
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c559f27
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Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.
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objectivism
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Ayn Rand |
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69d8ad1
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The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force against those who the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect yo..
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Ayn Rand |
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cafe76d
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I dont work with collectives. I don't consult, i don't co-operate, I don't collaborate.
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Ayn Rand |
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6c00739
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Now I don't see anything evil in a desire to make money. But money is only a means to some end. If a man wants it for a personal purpose -- to invest in his industry, to create, to study, to travel, to enjoy luxury -- he's completely moral. But the men who place money first go much beyond that. Personal luxury is a limited endeavor. What they want is ostentation: to show, to stun, to entertain, to impress others... At the price of their own..
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Ayn Rand |
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bf0b988
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Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
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political
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Ayn Rand |
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8c3d589
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She knew that she could not have reached this white serenity except as the sum of all the colors, of all the violence she had known.
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Ayn Rand |
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7670f3f
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She did not know what it was about him that had always made her want to see him broken.
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Ayn Rand |
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c4b67d8
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A "collective" mind does not exist. It is merely the sum of endless numbers of individual minds. If we have an endless number of individual minds who are weak, meek, submissive and impotent - who renounce their creative supremacy for the sake of the "whole" and accept humbly that the "whole's" verdict - we don't get a collective super-brain. We get only the weak, meek, submissive and impotent collective mind."
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group-think
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Ayn Rand |
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55a3af9
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A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roark, 'and just as seldom.
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integrity
people
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Ayn Rand |
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b27f24d
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Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.
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Ayn Rand |
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86f76dc
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We'll meet again. We'll meet when years have passed, and years make such a difference, don't they?
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Ayn Rand |
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c6d7a5b
|
Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
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Ayn Rand |
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0de42fe
|
The fortune my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the spirit. I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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Ayn Rand |