Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

Philosopher, Novelist

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

Men Mean Thinking Rights People Evil
Born
February 2, 1905
Died
March 6, 1982
Quotes
1K
Rank
#119

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Ayn Rand quotes (page 32 of 53)

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Ayn Rand Philosopher, Novelist
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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--just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept."

Hands Waiting Tears
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"If a life can have a 'theme-song' - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is [best] expressed in one word: Individualism."

Song Believe Individualism
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"...if men are to be ruled, then the enemy is reason."

Men Enemy Reason
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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."

Thinking Choices Focus
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"Art is the indispensable medium for the communication of a moral ideal."

Art Communication Moral
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"in architecture, mediocrity is more glaringly obvious than in other lines - because there's a huge, physical object such as a building to demonstrate it."

Mediocrity Lines Architecture
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"If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity."

Loyalty Integrity Passion
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"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth - and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity."

Integrity Thinking Reality
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"I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer."

Philosophy Reading Evil
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"Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba, or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the nonexistent 'rights' of gang rulers. It is not a free nation's duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses."

Sacrifice Russia Rights
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"I'm not brave enough to be a coward; I see the consequences too clearly."

Brave Coward Enough
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"Did it ever occur to you, that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical?"

Business Men Views
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"It stands to reason that if sacrifices are being given, somebody is collecting sacrifices."

Freedom Sacrifice Reason
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"But a few understand that building is a great symbol we live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life."

Reality Men House
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"Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future -- if mankind is to have a future"

Future Past Humanity
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"This miracle of me is mine to own and keep, and mine to guard, and mine to use, and mine to kneel before."

Miracle Identity Use
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"Why had we let it go? Why had we both been condemned...to an exile among dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for friendship, for the sound of human voices? Could I now reclaim a single hour spent talking to my brother, Philip, and give it to Ken Daggart? Who made it our duty to accept, as the only reward for our work, the gray torture of pretending love for those who roused nothing but contempt?"

Brother Giving Up Talking
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