Quotes by Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand
Russian Writer, Philosopher
Alive from: 1905-1982
Quotes 1 till 15 of 59.
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I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.
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There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
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A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
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A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.
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Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
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Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
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An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
Source: Atlas Shrugged (1957) -
Any group or “collective,” large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) -
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man's nature.
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Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.
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Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
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Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
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Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
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Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.
Source: The Objectivist februari 1971 -
Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth.
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