Ayn Rand

Philosopher, Novelist

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher known for her development of Objectivism and works like 'Atlas Shrugged'.

Born
February 2, 1905
Died
March 6, 1982
Quotes
1K
Rank
#119

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Ayn Rand quotes (page 17 of 53)

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Ayn Rand Philosopher, Novelist
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""Judge not, that ye be not judge"... is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself. There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accesory to the torture and murder of his victims. The moral principle to adopt... is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged.""

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"You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

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"Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth."

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"I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build."

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"If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject."

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"I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach."

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"The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves."

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"Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love."

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"Capitalism is our only moral system. All other systems take advantage of man's rights and liberties."

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"What I want you to understand, is the full evil of those who claim to have become convinced that this earth, by its nature, is a realm of malevolence where the good has no chance to win. Let them check their premises. Let them check their standards of value. Let them check - before they grant themselves the unspeakable license of evil-as-necessity - whether they know what is the good and what are the conditions it requires."

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"Contrary to the vulgar belief that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, we now see the capitalist system being discredited and destroyed all over the world, even though this system has given men the greatest material comforts."

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"It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark."

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"Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it."

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"Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion."

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"The problem is not those who dream, but those who can only dream."

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"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort."

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"to rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer."

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"You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live"

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