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Ayn Rand Novel Collection

Book by Ayn Rand · 50 quotes · Men, Fountainhead, Ifs

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Ayn Rand Novel Collection Quotes

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.”

MenDoePoliticalValuesPoliticsWealthExistenceMoralProducePaperStandardsGunGoldProtectionExpectedObjectivesOwnersDestroyingArbitraryMortgageDestroyersCounterfeit
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“It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.... Let me give you a tip on men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the...bell of an approaching looter.”

MenGivingPersonsSoulCharacterRunningEvilHe ManHatredLet MeSellsSentencesBellsProclaimingNickelsMoney Is Evil
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“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”

IfsWayWantYearsMaySaidI CanEndsMatterJoyMy OwnStandardsTraditionBest WayChosenTortureSixtyCondemningFountainhead
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“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.”

MenInspirationalMeanEndsSelfPurposeReligionInterestLibertyMoralSacrificeMoralityAchievementHighestSakeEvery ManRationalSelf Interest
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“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. 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 as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less.”

KnowsLoveLifeMeanAgePassionSpeakFeltLove IsCompassionWorshipGloryDirtyIndifferenceHeightContemptSympathyReverenceIncapableGlancesStewFountainheadBandages
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“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”

PeopleFeelsEarthPastFeltRiversTownsDistancePlanesDetachmentSlippingPrairieUntouchablesTaggart
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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 . . .”

WantLooksI CanEndsHandsEarthTreeMaterialsOffersResistanceMeaning Of LifeBranchesThickBowsBentFistsWristsArcsSpearsKnucklesGail
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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 independence.”

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“I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”

ThinkingMenShouldMindHandsForceHoursWonderFireAliveDangerousExpressionShould HaveGreat ThingsSpotsBurningSmokeCigaretteFingertipsTamed
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“It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”

ThinkingSelfHardEyeRunningEasySimpleKindnessAudienceVirtueRecordsJudgingEasierThousandEgoAchievementStandardsCharityOneselfNobleFakeCharmSelf RespectSubstitutesCompetenceDonatePersonal Achievement
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“I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live.”

WorldMindMadeActionValuesChoicesFeltHoursAbilityWifeLove YouMinesExpressionProductsPrideShapesSightMirrorsSolveChemicalsMetalsDesksSunriseEquationsLaboratoryMillsOf My MindFurnaces
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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.”

PeopleIfsMenWantWould BeEasyLove IsImpossibleHeardLove YouBrokenMetsOffersAnd LoveRelationStaringExceptionGail
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“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, "Who is destroying the world?" You are.”

MenWorldMeanMadePurposeEvilAsksLosesMoralVirtueProduceBecomingSurvivalProductionsDestroyingImmoralPietyLootingFodder
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“Do not let the hero in your soul perish.”

InspirationalSoulHeroAddictionRecoveryYour SoulAddictSobrietyDrug AddictionDrugs And AlcoholDrug AddictRecoveringSwampsIrreplaceableAddiction RecoveryAlcohol AddictionDrug Addiction RecoveryOne Tree Hill VoiceoverTree HillAddicts In RecoveryOne Tree Hill OpeningShort One Tree HillOne Tree Hill LifeOne Tree Hill LoveInspirational Addiction RecoveryOvercoming AddictionInspirational RecoveryOne Tree Hill MemorableAlcohol RecoveryDrug RecoveryMotivational RecoveryOne Tree Hill DeathOne Tree Hill InspirationalInspirational Drug RecoveryOne Tree Hill FriendshipLonely Path
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