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Explore more quotes by Ayn Rand
"He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind."
"When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another - except brute, physical force."
"When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer."
"But, you see, it's not what you do that matters really. It's only you.""Me what?""Just you here. Or you in the city. Or you somewhere in the world. I don't know. Just that."
"She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth."
"In art, and in literature, the end and the means, or the subject and the style, must be worthy of each other.That which is not worth contemplating in life, is not worth re-creating in art."
"Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others."
"They scattered with no melody, no harmony, no rhythm to hold them. If music was emotion and emotion came from thought, then this was the scream of chaos, of the irrational, of the helpless, of man's self-abdication."
"Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration."
Exlpore more Ethics quotes
"But you can't just leave it at that!" said Anathema, pushing forward. "Think of all things you could do! Good things."Like what?" said Adam suspiciously."Well... you could bring all the whales back, to start with."He put his head on one side. "An' that'd stop people killing them?"She hesitated. It would have been nice to say yes."An' if people do start killing 'em, what would you ask me to do about 'em?" said Adam. "No. I reckon I'm getting the hang of this now. Once I start messing around like that, there'd be no stoppin' it. Seems to me, the only sensible thing is for people to know if they kill a whale, they've got a dead whale."
"Religion [dharma] is that where there is no irreligion (adharma, immorality). Religion cannot exist where there is irreligion. There can be only one or the other. Behind every intention, there is either [the force of] religion or [the force of] irreligion."
"We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?"
"Cruel people are not only people who kill innocent people with guns. Individuals who steal from government coffers to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor are grossly cruel."
"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley."
"Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for promises you didn't keep."
"It is better to be slave to righteousness than slave to sin."
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