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Ayn Rand Quotes

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Famous Ayn Rand Quotes

“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
Book:Ayn Rand Novel Collection
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“She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

IfsLifeHumansLittlesMatterWholeMomentsLastsFeltSoundKnownDyingRedEternityDeeperSnowIndividualismHymnsUndefeated
Book:We the Living
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“Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?”

ThinkingKnowsWantLifeShouldLooksPhilosophyWantedUniverseBornWorkKnow HowKnowingAliveProducePhilosopherBreatheStomachLook At MeLooking GoodDeep ThoughtObjectivismI'm Alive
Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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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”

LifePainHappinessDeathWishFearAchievementFunctionThreatRewardsSakePunishmentLive LifeNovelistsEarningAvoidingIncentivesPursuit Of HappinessEscapingFamous WomenAvoiding Death
Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.”

LifeSelfEarthHeavenSacrificeCenturyMoralityBattleSakeNeighborGhostSelf Sacrifice
Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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“I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.”

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Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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“It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature-and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning-and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or "The Fountainhead" that they will betray: it is their own souls.”

MenWorldLifeGivingDoeSoulMatterRealityMovingCourageGenerationsAchieveMinesConcernIndividualityBetrayalAddressesBetrayStatureFountainhead
Book:The Fountainhead
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“But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

MenLifePurposeSufferingDiesEnjoyTeachMoralitySurvivalPursuitTortureFrustrationFraudIrrationalWhimMindlessEnjoy Yourself
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need no morality on a desert island - it is on a desert island that he would need it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay for it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will drop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a harvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today - and reality will wipe him out, as he deserves; reality will show him that life is a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough to buy it.”

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Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“If a life could have a theme song - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is a religion, an obsession, a mania or all of these expressed in one word - individualism. I was born with that obsession, and I've never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless and tragically needed.”

IfsKnowsLifeBelieveSongBeliefI BelieveCausesBornMinesNeededWorthyObsessionThemeHopelessIndividualismWorthwhileMisunderstoodOne WordMania
Author:Ayn Rand
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“If you want to know the one reason that's taking me back, I'll tell you: I cannot bring myself to abandon to destruction all the greatness of the world, all that which was mine and yours, which was made by us and is still ours by right - because I cannot believe that men refuse to see, that they can remain blind and deaf to us forever, when the truth is ours and their lives depend on accepting it.”

IfsKnowsMenWorldWantLifeBelieveLongMadeStillsReasonDesireBeliefLosesAcceptingForeverGreatnessMinesDependsTruth IsBattleDestructionBlindRefuseAbandonDeafDesire To Live
Author:Ayn Rand
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“Since a rational man's ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a life-long process — and the higher the values, the harder the struggle — he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved.”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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“The man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.”

MenLifeFeelingsPurposeOrderEvilHe ManCapableMercyNovelistsProductiveUrgesPurpose Driven LifeDriftingControl Of Your LifePurposelessness
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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