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Ayn Rand Quotes

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Famous Ayn Rand Quotes

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned. His own happiness is man’s only moral purpose, but only his own virtue can achieve it…Life is the reward of virtue- and happiness is the goal and the reward of life. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy- a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your won destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but using your mind’s fullest power. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seek nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing bu rational actions. The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trade…A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.”

PhilosophyPhilosophicalObjectivismJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomRealityTruthValuesVirtueMoralityLogicRationalManContradictionMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice…It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an isolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold a man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality…To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. (The) myth decleares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil-he became a moral being…The evils for which they damn him are reasn, morality, creativeness, joy-all the cardinal values of his existence….the essence of his nature as a man. Whatever he was- that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love- he was not a man.”

PhilosophyPhilosophicalObjectivism
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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“Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as in Nazi (National Socialist) Germany. The degree of socialization may be total, as in Russia—or partial, as in England. Theoretically, the differences are superficial; practically, they are only a matter of time. The basic principle, in all cases, is the same.”

PhilosophyGovernmentEvilPoliticsFreedomLibertyDemocracyEconomicsLibertarianCommunismAnarchyFascismTaxationNazismStatismVoluntaryismObjectivismNon Aggression PrincipleAncapAnarcho CapitalismInitiation Of Force
Author:Ayn Rand
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“Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders’ attempt to evade the fact that A is A. All the secret evil you dread to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthPainHappinessValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say ‘It is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: ‘Who am I to know?’- he is declaring: ‘Who am I to live?”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice. But you cannot live as anything else—and the alternative is that state of living death which you now see within you and around you, the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthPainHappinessValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct.”

LifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilMoralityGoodManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires...Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. ‘Value’ is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue’ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value’ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“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.”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man’s life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being—not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement—not survival at any price, since there’s only one price that pays for man’s survival: reason.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyValuesEvilVirtueMoralityGoodRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“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. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously, considers precarious; reason, to him, is a means of deception; he feels that men possess some power more potent than reason—and only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a sense of security, a proof that he has gained control of the mystic endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: conviction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his will between existence and consciousness, as if, by agreeing to fake the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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“the collectivist premise that men’s lives belong to society [...] reveals the enormity of the extent to which altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out”

HumanismSocialismIndividualismObjectivismEthics And Moral PhilosophyAyn Rand
Book:The virtue of selfishness: a new concept of egoism
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“Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomRealityTruthValuesVirtueMoralityRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality—you who have never known any—but to discover it.”

LifePhilosophyValuesManMoralsObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind.”

ThinkingLifeMindReasonPhilosophyWisdomTruthValuesExistenceKnowledgeVirtueMoralityRationalManMoralsThinkPursuit Of HappinessObjectivismAtlas ShruggedJohn Galt
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Rebelliousness or unconventionality as such do not constitute proof of individualism. Just as individualism does not consist merely of rejecting collectivism, so it does not consist merely of the absence of conformity. A conformist is a man who declares, “It’s true because others believe it”—but an individualist is not a man who declares, “It’s true because I believe it.” An individualist declares, “I believe it because I see in reason that it’s true.”

IndividualismObjectivismIndividualist
Book:The virtue of selfishness: a new concept of egoism
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“არ მომწონს, როცა ცდილობენ, სიტყვებით ან აზრებით მოიპოვონ სხვების ნდობა. თუ კაცი პატიოსნად იქცევა, ნდობის წინასწარ მოპოვება არ სჭირდება, მისი საქციელის რაციონალური ანალიზიც საკმარისია. ვინც ცდილობს, სხვა ადამიანის ნდობა დაიმსახუროს, მას უპატიოსნო ზრახვები აქვს, თუნდაც ამაში საკუთარ თავსაც არ უტყდებოდეს.”

ObjectivismAtlasPhylosophyShrugged
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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