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cae3fa2
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Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. 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 your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking ..
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rationality
values
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Ayn Rand |
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d45c04b
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Andrei, did you like the opera?" "Not particularly." "Andrei, do you see what you're missing?" "I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless." "Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?" "No. But I enjoyed it." "The music?" "No. The way you listened to it."
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beauty
music
perception
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Ayn Rand |
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8754c57
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To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.
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Ayn Rand |
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1dd1e98
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For the coming of that day shall I fight, I and my sons and my chosen friends. For the freedom of Man. For his rights. For his life. For his honor.
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freedom
life
rights
honor
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Ayn Rand |
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56975ee
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If a man says: "But I realize that my natural endowments are mediocre--shall I then suffer, be ashamed, have an inferiority complex?" The answer is: "In the basic, crucial sphere, the sphere of morality and action, it is not your endowments that matter, but what you do with them." It is here that all men are free and equal, regardless of natural gifts. You can be, in your own modest sphere, as good morally as the genius is in his--if you li..
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Ayn Rand |
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da5d891
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He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto--or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the a..
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Ayn Rand |
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b9816e9
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I am. I think. I will. My hands. . . My spirit . . . My sky . . . This earth of mine . . . . What more must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer. I stand here on the summit of the mountain I lift my head and I spread m arms. 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 sanct..
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Ayn Rand |
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76e75fd
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Many words have been granted me, and some are wise, and some are false, but only three are holy: "I will it!"
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Ayn Rand |
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bcba006
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This is pity," he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue."
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virtue
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Ayn Rand |
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90cd90f
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I'll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
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Ayn Rand |
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0116fd7
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There can be no justification for choosing any part of that which one knows to be evil.
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Ayn Rand |
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17f8f8d
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I think the man who designed this should have committed suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allowed it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He's given it to them and he's made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn't have offered i..
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Ayn Rand |
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d22c3a5
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It's a curse, you know, to be able to look higher than you're allowed to reach.
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Ayn Rand |
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8d9de3f
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Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life." "Your strength?" "Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and what you make of it . . ..
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Ayn Rand |
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03885f7
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It's really very simple. 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 she is beautiful, you offer her 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..
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Ayn Rand |
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c26a203
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It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much.
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Ayn Rand |
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1ebfb69
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Love is reverence, worship, glory, and the upward glance. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love-the total passion for the total height-you're incapable of anything less..
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Ayn Rand |
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f3a529d
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These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man's freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is..
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Ayn Rand |
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273a866
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Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that t..
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function
ornamentation
human-body
form
humans
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Ayn Rand |
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6357969
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Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death."
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Ayn Rand |
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245d114
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A Conformist is a man who declares, "It's true because others believe it" - but an Individualist is NOT a man who declares, "It's true because I believe it." An Individual declares, "I believe it because I see in reason that it is true."
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individualist
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Ayn Rand |
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36a6e21
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People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.
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pain
suffering
happy
joy
happiness
relief
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Ayn Rand |
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8acc25f
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Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own ..
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Ayn Rand |
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15a1768
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Fransisco, what's the most depraved type of human being? -The man without purpose.
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Ayn Rand |
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d2e0e1a
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to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay - that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live - that your body is a mach..
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work
purpose
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Ayn Rand |
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0466227
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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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e608f5a
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You want to do it?" "I might. If you offer me enough." "Howard--anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul..." "That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. 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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Ayn Rand |
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5a5a629
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There is no affirmation without the one who affirms. in this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours
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love
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Ayn Rand |
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b2778a3
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Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others.
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Ayn Rand |
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e213d44
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One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes
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Ayn Rand |
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47b67ff
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Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.
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Ayn Rand |
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2d7c421
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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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Ayn Rand |
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1fa8ce7
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And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose... I am a man. this miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before! I do not surrender my treasures, nor do I share them. The fortune of my spirit is not to be blown into coins of brass and flung to the winds as alms for the poor of the s..
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Ayn Rand |
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4e47528
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He never felt lonliness except when he was happy.
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Ayn Rand |
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1ea3cbc
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The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.
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Ayn Rand |
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4d20a82
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That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: 'Is this true?' They ask: 'Is this what others think is true?' Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Thos..
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Ayn Rand |
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4b47535
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The only thing that matters my goal my reward my beginning my end is the work itself. My work done my way. A private personal selfish egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am.
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Ayn Rand |
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a56a869
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The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator thinks, the parasite copies. The creator produces, the parasite loots. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature - the parasite's concern is the conquest of men. The creator requires independence, he neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power, he wants to bind all men togethe..
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Ayn Rand |
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47b6901
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Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.
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Ayn Rand |
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4aec229
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What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it." "Isn't it?"
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passion
inspiration
howard-roark
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Ayn Rand |
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90371f4
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She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.
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Ayn Rand |
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ca50c2c
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Then she understood that what she needed was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form, the sense of an activity going step by step to some chosen end across a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a closed circle, completed and gone, leading nowhere. But the work of building a path was a living sum, so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired..
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nature
purpose
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Ayn Rand |
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295a5ea
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Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...
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sex
wealth
slavery
freedom
reason
life
love
philosophy
causality
individual-rights
objective-law
volition
pursuit-of-happiness
commerce
jobs
usa
economy
rock-and-roll
crisis
economics
law
regulation
force
liberty
society
political-philosophy
constitution
government
atheism
capitalism
tyranny
trade
drugs
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Ayn Rand |
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c181c86
|
The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.
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Ayn Rand |