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Ayn Rand Quotes

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Famous Ayn Rand Quotes

“Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes, his whims - as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs. He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force - he finds no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts and reason.”

IfsMenWantMeanReasonFactsForceWishDealsConsciousnessSatisfactionSurrenderObedienceAgreementDictatorConsentCraveCravingMysticAssertionWhimDictating
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.”

MenGivingAbleValuesWishDealsPrinciplesProduceMaterialsShapesToolsTradeGoodsObjectivismAtlasValue Of MoneyMoney Is The Root Of All EvilMoney Is EvilMoochers
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability.”

MenMatterJobsValuesEnergyTermAbilityLevelsEffortMillionsHe ManMaterialsAmbitionNo Matter WhatFortuneEnormousInventionProportionFactoriesPercentagesPaymentEgalitarianismJanitorNew Inventions
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.”

MenValuesLeftStrongBrainHe ManMaterialsIntellectualWeakAddCompetitionBottomPatternsIntellectHopelessReceivingExploitationPaymentPyramidsBonusEgalitarianismIneptitude
Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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“Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.”

MenDoeDifferentFactsLawValuesChoicesSocialEqualUniversalEqualityInequalityFacultyEstablishmentProposeDefiancePyramidsAristocracyAbolishUnfairnessEgalitarianismVolitionInvertedDifferent Choices
Book:The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
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“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Look around you and look at history. You will see the achievements of man’s mind. You will see man’s unlimited potentiality for greatness, and the faculty that makes it possible. You will see that man is not a helpless monster by nature, but he becomes one when he discards that faculty: his mind. And if you ask me, what is greatness? I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.”

IfsMenMindLooksSelfReasonPurposeValuesThreeAsksAnswersSelf EsteemGreatnessAchievementCapacityFundamentalsMonstersEsteemAsk MeLive ByFacultyHelplessUnlimited
Author:Ayn Rand
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“The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive — a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society — a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question.”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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“A chronic lack of pleasure, of any enjoyable, rewarding or stimulating experiences, produces a slow, gradual, day-by-day erosion of man's emotional vitality, which he may ignore or repress, but which is recorded by the relentless computer of his subconscious mechanism that registers an ebbing flow, then a trickle, then a few last drops of fuel--until the day when his inner motor stops and he wonders desperately why he has no desire to go on, unable to find any definable cause of his hopeless, chronic sense of exhaustion.”

MenMayLastsDesireCausesPleasureWonderProduceEmotionalGoes OnComputerFlowFuelHopelessMechanismLazinessSubconsciousVitalityEnjoyableMotorRelentlessRegisterExhaustionErosion
Book:The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought
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