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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 cha...more

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No action could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon another the burden of his abdication of choice.

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Señor d.‘Anconia, what do you think is going to happen to the world?”“Just exactly what it deserves.”“Oh, how cruel!”“Don’t you believe in the operati...more

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It seemed natural; natural to the moment’s peculiar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, immediate, but disconnected, like a b...more

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It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickl...more

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Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and w...more

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They said you were hard and cold and unfeeling.”“But it’s true...I am, in the sense they mean—only have they ever told you in just what sense they mea...more

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Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's w...more

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...there’s nothing of any importance in life—except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It’s th...more

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Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choi...more

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...they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us.

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If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only fo...more

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If that’s the price of getting together, then I’ll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with any human beings! If the rest of them can surviv...more

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...she stood beside him, sagging in his arms, abandoning herself to anything he wished, in open acknowledgment of his power to reduce her to helplessn...more

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Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he...more