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145ddc3
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I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.
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freedom-of-thought
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Ayn Rand |
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0c64099
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Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes."
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Ayn Rand |
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bd20373
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Only the man who extols the purity of love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.
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Ayn Rand |
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8a7b630
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Morality is a code of black and white. When and if men attempt a compromise, it is obvious which side will necessarily lose and which will necessarily profit.
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Ayn Rand |
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13ce4ea
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The ' pleasure' of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of Consciousness.
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responsibility
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Ayn Rand |
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a590721
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She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought- and never worried about it again.
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Ayn Rand |
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bd398ef
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We are on strike against martyrdom--and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but ours--and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others.
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rational-egoism
objectivism
ayn-rand
individualism
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Ayn Rand |
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434b07c
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She sat at the window of the train....The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while...She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up...It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean..
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Ayn Rand |
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6565fb9
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Kira, the highest thing in man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a god. And you, Kira, are my highest reverence...
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Ayn Rand |
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1832272
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Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
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Ayn Rand |
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73f9dde
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It is a sin to write this.
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Ayn Rand |
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a199aaf
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To a life; which is reason unto itself.
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Ayn Rand |
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46dc295
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You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark
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society
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Ayn Rand |
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60fab14
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Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice...It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an isolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibili..
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philosophical
philosophy
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Ayn Rand |
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28fe5dc
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Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man's survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don't. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgme..
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individual
rationality
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Ayn Rand |
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afeb781
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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.
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Ayn Rand |
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16ca838
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My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that "doesn't count," i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational -- not relating their one action or one conviction to another."
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Ayn Rand |
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210bada
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Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them--j..
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Ayn Rand |
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51bc674
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I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom. . .To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
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Ayn Rand |
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c33aac1
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It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.
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Ayn Rand |
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a1584e2
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And that night we knew that to hold the body of women in our arms in neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.
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Ayn Rand |
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cd98f8c
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That's a cute sentence: the years to come. Why are you so sure they're coming?
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Ayn Rand |
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68c25f3
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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 you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is do..
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Ayn Rand |
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3b57f3f
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And man will go on. Man, not men.
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Ayn Rand |
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04ac097
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She stood at the window, her arms spread wide, holding on to each side of the frame, it was as if she held a piece of the city.
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Ayn Rand |
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9026e3d
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The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
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housing-projects
human-regression
objectivism
society
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Ayn Rand |
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186b523
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The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
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Ayn Rand |
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f9bacfe
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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 freedom. That and nothing else.
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Ayn Rand |
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24217c4
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It was beautiful and rare, and you have every right to despise me." She stood pressed to the wall, not moving. "When you came in, I thought 'Send her away.' But I knew that if you went away, I'd run after you. I thought 'I won't say a word.' But I knew that you'd know it before you left. I love you. I know you'd think kindlier of me if I said that I hate you."
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Ayn Rand |
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a5a03f9
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To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.
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Ayn Rand |
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02e1fa5
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But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon th..
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individuality
freedom
ayn-rand
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Ayn Rand |
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d2a307d
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The "pleasure" of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of consciousness. And so are the kind of social gatherings, held for no other purpose than the expression of hysterical chaos, where the guests wander around in an alcoholic stupor, prattling noisily and senselessly, and enjoying the illusion of a universe where one is not burdened with purpose, logic, reality or awareness."
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Ayn Rand |
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efa1c0e
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When she had gone upstairs, he walked to a window and stood looking up at the sky. His head thrown back, he felt the pull of his throat muscles and he wondered whether the peculiar solemnity of looking at the sky comes, not from what one contemplates, but from that uplift of one's head.
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Ayn Rand |
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7979319
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writing is serious business and not for any stray bastard that wants to try it.
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Ayn Rand |
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9691408
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I understand that centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him. ~Equality 7-2521 (as Prometheus), pg 98
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Ayn Rand |
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e1d0563
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Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy as a bond between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own.
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Ayn Rand |
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ca52bcd
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You have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear, depends on your standard of value.
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Ayn Rand |
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ecf69d6
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People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.
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Ayn Rand |
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91ddabe
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Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness:..
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Ayn Rand |
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00694b9
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Here's another way. This is most important. Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them what they want. Make them think that the mere thought of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying 'I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is of great h..
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Ayn Rand |
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503bb65
|
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as " the right to enslave ."
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right
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Ayn Rand |
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5f510c7
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All work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.
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Ayn Rand |
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f547a66
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In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though she was too young to know the reason, that indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence were possible only to those who regarded sex and themselves as evil.
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sex
trust
love
evil
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Ayn Rand |
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778568b
|
She watched the prairies the rivers, the towns slipping past at an untouchable distance below - and she noted that the sense of detachment one feels when looking at the earth from a plane was the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance from people seemed longer. - Dagny Taggart
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Ayn Rand |