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Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Quotes

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Famous Ayn Rand Quotes

“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.”

PeopleNeedsCountryUseAmericaNationsLibertyTroubleGroupsEconomicMovementDemandEconomicsBlameLibertarianRussiaGermanyMinoritiesSovietJustificationDictatorshipNaziBusinessmanBourgeoisieNazi GermanyScapegoatSoviet RussiaMinority Groups
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“I think it's funny. There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns - just somebody naming the exact nature of what you're doing?”

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Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money." No other language or nation had ever used these words before. . . . Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.”

PeopleIfsFirstsFactsUsedAsksNamesLanguageNationsWealthMaking MoneyAsk MePhrasesDistinction
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people's savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.”

PeopleGovernmentActionSupportPolicyCitizensSpendingScalesSavingArtificialExpansionInflationDeficitSavingsRobbersPlunderFiscal PolicyDeficit Spending
Book:The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z
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“There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days-the conviction that ideas matter . . . . That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters . . .”

PeopleMindMeanIdeasEndsMatterYouthFundamentalsConvictionAcquire
Book:The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
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“If [people] place such things as friendship and family ties above their own productive work, yes, then they are immoral. Friendship, family life and human relationships are not primary in a man's life. A man who places others first, above his own creative work, is an emotional parasite.”

PeopleIfsMenFirstsHumansCreativeEmotionalPrimariesTiesProductiveImmoralFamily LifeHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsCreative WorkParasitesFamily TiesProductive WorkFriendship And Family
Author:Ayn Rand
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“Hence the sterile, uninspiring futility of a great many theoretical discussions of ethics, and the resentment which many people feel towards such discussions: moral principles remain in their minds as floating abstractions, offering them a goal they cannot grasp and demanding that they reshape their souls in its image, thus leaving them with a burden of undefinable moral guilt.”

PeopleFeelsMindSoulGoalMoralPrinciplesEthicsGuiltLeavingBurdenDiscussionGreat MenOfferingResentmentFloatingAbstractionTheoreticalFutilityMoral PrinciplesUninspiring
Author:Ayn Rand
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