Ayn Rand Quotes and Sayings(7)

"Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration."

― Ayn Rand

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"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."

― Ayn Rand

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"To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: Rationality."

― Ayn Rand

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"The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: Everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort."

― Ayn Rand

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"No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the sum of his knowledge."

― Ayn Rand

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"I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. This – the supremacy of reason – was, is and will be the primary concern of my work, and the essence of Objectivism." ('Brief Summary', The Objectivist Sept 1971)

― Ayn Rand

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"What objectivity and the study of philosophy requires is not an 'open mind,' but an active mind - a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them criticially." ("Philosophical Detection" in 'Philosophy: Who Needs It')

― Ayn Rand

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"When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism – with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church."
("The Objectivist Ethics" in 'The Virtue of Selfishness')

― Ayn Rand

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"You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice is whether these principles are true or false, whether they represent your conscious, rational convictions – or a grab-bag of notions snatched at random, whose sources, validity, context and consequences you do not know, notions which, more often that not, you would drop like a hot potato if you knew. ('Philosophy: Who Needs It')

― Ayn Rand

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"Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice." ('Romantic Manifesto')

― Ayn Rand

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"In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance."

― Ayn Rand

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"If a dedication page were to precede the total of my work, it would read: To the glory of Man." ('Romantic Manifesto')

― Ayn Rand

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"Show me your achievement, and the knowledge will give me courage for mine."
('The Fountainhead' 1943)

― Ayn Rand

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"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value – and so long as that beneficiary is anybody than oneself, anything goes."

― Ayn Rand

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"The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap."

― Ayn Rand

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"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."

― Ayn Rand

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"Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world – to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want."

― Ayn Rand

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"Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy ... Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions."
('The Virtue of Selfishness')

― Ayn Rand

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"The objectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value
– and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man."

― Ayn Rand

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"Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work – pride is the result."

― Ayn Rand

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"To hold an unchanging youth is to reach at the end, the vision with which one started." 

― Ayn Rand

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