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Favorite Ayn Rand quote?

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I haven't read enough AR yet to be sure, but I was re-reading Galt's speech recently and this sentence seemed particularly poignant: "If you permit it to be done, you deserve it." To me it encapsulates individualism. It reminds me that I am capable of taking on the world, and winning.

Do you have a favorite quote? Why?

If it's already in your profile, feel free to explain your reason.

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I haven't read enough AR yet to be sure, but I was re-reading Galt's speech recently and this sentence seemed particularly poignant: "If you permit it to be done, you deserve it." To me it encapsulates individualism. It reminds me that I am capable of taking on the world, and winning.

Do you have a favorite quote? Why?

If it's already in your profile, feel free to explain your reason.

I'm not entirely sure how it goes; but I always loved a paragraph from AS that when something like "...and the earth is littered with mangled cripples, who don't know what has hit them or why...and the traffic cops of morality chortle and say that man, by his nature, is unable to walk".

It's my favorite not for its content, but how Rand wrote it.

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"The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters and intends to be the master"

This quote is particularly poignant today.

My signature line comes from Galt's speech and is, I think, self explanatory :D

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Do you have a favorite quote? Why?

Mercy for the guilty is treason to the innocent.

I was picked to give a summary of the objectivist virtue of justice at a students of objectivism group once. It was extremely hard to do, mostly because I didn't know how to essentialize or write very well then. I was relieved to see that in OPAR Peikoff admitted that this was also one of the hardest virtues to understand. Which is why it is so important.

I am presently going through some very stressful quasi legal battles, and this quote, along with "Focus on the Solutions, not the Problems." from Terry Goodkind, is preserving my sanity. (that and aikido)

I was skimming the article in the Islam to Objectivism thread, and this also popped out at me.

Ayn Rand said, "To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true."

I think this is the core of the malevolent universe premise.

<Φ>aj

Edited by aristotlejones
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"I am therefore Ill think"

Expresses in in one sentence the antidote to modern philosophies greatest errors.

"Whoever you are—you who are alone with my words in this moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand—the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: 'I am, therefore I'll think.'

"Accept the irrevocable fact that your life depends upon your mind. Admit that the whole of your struggle, your doubts, your fakes, your evasions, was a desperate quest for escape from the responsibility of a volitional consciousness—a quest for automatic knowledge, for instinctive action, for intuitive certainty—and while you called it a longing for the state of an angel, what you were seeking was the state of an animal. Accept, as your moral ideal, the task of becoming a man.

So powerful.....

Edited by Plasmatic
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I really like "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine". I actually put this one on the back of a shirt I used to wear to the gym.

I also like to think of the quote "By what right? By what code? By what standard?", especially when I hear someone talking about how they think they are entitled to a job, unconditional love, etc.

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Do not let the fire go out, spark by irreplaceble spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desire can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

It's my favorite for its beauty and its putting in words exactly what I need to hear.

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If any part of your uncertainty is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind.

America's abundance was not created 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.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.

One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.

As an American, you are likely to be very benevolent and enormously innocent about the nature of evil. You are unable to believe that some people can advocate man's destruction for the sake of man's destruction-- and when you hear them, you think they don't mean it. But they do.

I have more than one favorite. :lol:

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Guest Erik Martinsen
"Tell that bastard to look at me, then look in the mirror, and ask if himself weather I would ever consider my moral stature at the mercy of his actions."

Powerful, forceful, and very true.

Thanks for the great quote. Where does it come from though?

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Thanks for the great quote. Where does it come from though?

Atlas Shrugged, Part III,Ch-8:

... "Nobody's ever suggested any such thing! Nobody's ever considered it! Please, Mr. Galt! Don't believe him! He doesn't mean it!"

"Oh yes, he does," said Galt. "Tell the bastard to look at me, then look in the mirror, then ask himself whether I would ever think that my moral stature is at the mercy of his actions."

This is Galt's response what might be (abstractly) thought of as a threat by someone else to kill hostages.

Trivia: According o the CD's search-results, it is one of 8 uses of the word "bastard" in Atlas.

Edited by softwareNerd
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My senior quote.

"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it."

I like this one a lot.

"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."

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"It is to the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, and the cannibals (the literal cannibals, this time) -- to the under-developed, the undeveloped, and the not-to-be-developed cultures -- that the Capitalist United States of America is asked to apologize for her skyscrapers, her automobiles, her plumbing, and her smiling, confident, untortured, un-skinned-alive, un-eaten young men!"

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Atlas Shrugged, Part III,Ch-8:

This is Galt's response what might be (abstractly) thought of as a threat by someone else to kill hostages.

Specifically Dr. Ferris says there are suggestions to kill a number of children and all people 60 or over to insure the survival of the rest. Mr. Thompson denies this, and Galt responds with the quotation.

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Does anybody know what Francisco said after a lady called him heartless because of his money speech?

...but you're heartless."

"Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'But I didn't know it!'—you will not be forgiven."

The woman turned away, a shudder running through the flesh of her cheeks and through the angry tremor of her voice: "Well, it's certainly a funny way to talk at a party!"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Possibly one of the shortest Ayn Rand quotes ; one that took me years to fully integrate,and to fully appreciate:

" Man is a being of self made soul ".

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  • 3 weeks later...

The most chilling quotes I've read so far in AS were during the Directive 10-289 enactment.

"If we are to perish, let's make sure that we all perish together. Let's make sure that we leave them no chance to survive!"

"There was once an Age of Reason., but we've progressed beyond it. This is the Age of Love."

"If we do away with genius, we'll have a fairer distribution of ideas."

"I know what I'm talking about. That's because I never went to college."

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