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Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Quotes

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Famous Ayn Rand Quotes

“the important consideration is not your opponents, but yourself. It is bad to scream at them, not because it hurts them, they ought to be hurt, but because it hurts you. Anger is a form of recognition. It amounts to admitting that those people are important to you and that they have the power to hurt you. Actually, they haven't.”

PeopleImportantFormHurtHavensOughtAmountAngerRecognitionOpponentsConsiderationScreamIt HurtsAdmitting
Book:Letters of Ayn Rand
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“The plot of a movie is its motor. It is not an accident that people call pictures 'vehicles' for stars. A vehicle has to move. A plotless story is like an expensive car with a wonderful body design, luxurious seats, upholstery, headlights (production, direction, cast) - and no motor under its hood. That is why it gets nowhere.”

PeopleStoriesBodyMovingStarsWonderfulCarDesignCastsProductionsAccidentsMovieSeatsExpensivePlotVehicleMotorHoodLuxuriousHeadlightsUpholsteryExpensive Cars
Book:Letters of Ayn Rand
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“The truly and deliberately evil men are a very small minority; it is the appeaser who unleashes them on mankind; it is the appeaser's intellectual abdication that invites them to take over. When a culture's dominant trend is geared to irrationality, the thugs win over the appeasers. When intellectual leaders fail to foster the best in the mixed, unformed, vacillating character of people at large, the thugs are sure to bring out the worst. When the ablest men turn into cowards, the average men turn into brutes.”

PeopleMenCharacterTurnsCultureEvilWinningLeaderFailingWorstMankindIntellectualAverageMinoritiesCowardTrendsInvitesDominantBrutesThugAverage ManIrrationalityEvil ManAbdication
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.”

PeopleIfsIdeasHelpingFightingSimpleViewsMoralVirtueIssuesDutyMajorsRegardCharityWorthyHelping OthersPrimariesAffordableIfs AndHelping Other PeopleMoral Duty
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“In western civilization, the period ruled by mysticism is known as the 'Dark Ages' and the 'Middle Ages'. I will assume that you know the nature of that period and the state of human existence in those ages. The Renaissance broke the rules of the mystics. "Renaissance" means the "rebirth". Few people today will care to remind you that it was a rebirth of reason - of man's mind.”

PeopleKnowsMenMindHumansMeanStatesReasonCareAgeTodayDarkExistenceKnownHistoryMiddlePeriodsCivilizationAssumingWesternBrokeMysticismRebirthMiddle AgesDark AgesRenaissanceHuman ExistenceWestern Civilization
Author:Ayn Rand
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“America's skyscrapers were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living - including the inhabitants of the slums.”

PeopleAmericaPurposeIndividualEnergyWealthHigherStandardsBuiltRoseIncludingProfitFundInitiativeStandards Of LivingSlumsSkyscraper
Author:Ayn Rand
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“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”

PeopleThinkingMenWorldPersonsSelfRealityTruthLyingWhiteViewsMastersVictoryGainsDestructionVictimSlaveOneselfSurrenderI've LearnedLiarsCondemningWhite LieLies And LiarsAbdication
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“She felt a board indifference toward the immediate world around her toward other children and adults alike. She took it as a regrettable accident to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull. She had caught a glimpse of another world and she knew it existed somewhere, the world that had created trains, bridges, telegraph wires and signal lights winking in the night. She had to wait she thought, and grow up to that world. - Dagny Taggart”

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Author:Ayn Rand
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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”

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Book:Ayn Rand Novel Collection
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“These are the things before me. And as I stand here at the door of glory, I look behind me for the last time. I look upon the history of men, which I have learned from the books, and I wonder. It was a long story, and the spirit which moved it was the spirit of man’s freedom. But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.”

PeopleMenHumansLooksLongBookStoriesLastsSpiritFreedomBehindsWonderHistoryDoorsBrotherGloryMovedI Have LearnedLast TimeStandpointFree SpiritBeing FreeLong StoryUltimate Freedom
Book:Study Guide: Anthem (Study Gudie and Book)
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“Observe how many people evade, rationalize and drive their minds into a state of blind stupor, in dread of discovering that those they deal with- their "loved ones" or friends or business associates or political rulers- are not merely mistaken, but evil. Observe that this dread leads them to sanction, to help and to spread the very evil whose existence they fear to acknowledge.”

PeopleMindStatesHelpingPoliticalEvilDealsExistenceBlindSpreadAcknowledgeLoved OnesDiscoveringDreadRulersMistakenAssociatesSanctionsRationalize
Book:Ayn Rand Reader
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“America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.”

PeopleMenWayCountryWholeJobsAmericaMovingPoliticalSufferingPoliticsInterestCommonPayStepsSacrificeGeniusHigherDiscoveryCapitalismEconomicsMachinesFortuneMoving ForwardAbundanceProductiveGoodsTechnologicalWagesPursuedCheaperFree ManEvery StepCommon GoodBetter JobsScientific DiscoveryIndustrializationPersonal InterestPolitics And Economics
Author:Ayn Rand
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“You love your work. God help you, you love it! And thats the curse. That's the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren't you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that's not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That's the only kind they fear. I don't know why”

PeopleKnowsMenLooksKindHelpingPastMovingStreetsHatredBrandsSubstanceCurseHatsForeheadsBundlesGod HelpFountainheadLove Your Work
Book:The Fountainhead
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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
Book:Ayn Rand Novel Collection
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“People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWantGivingFeelsSinKnowledgeKnowingVirtueTroubleOughtBlessingIntellectualWeaknessGuiltInstinctFollowingDeeperIntellectGuiltyBlessFollowersJustification
Author:Ayn Rand
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“I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I've got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWayGivingMadeI CanEndsMatterDoneMotivationGoalToo MuchOffersFunctionRewardsSelfishMy WayPeterEgotisticalThings That MatterWork DoneTenantsOnly Thing That Matters
Book:The Fountainhead
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“I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.”

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Book:Ayn Rand Reader
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