It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence. β¨ Ayn Rand (2011). Ayn Rand Novel Collection, p.781, Penguin
More Author Quotes
- It's because...you see, if we had souls, which we haven't, and if our souls met--yours and mine--they'd fight to the death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they'd se β¦ βΆ
- Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice. β¨ Ayn Rand (2016). Atlas Shrugged, p.604, Hamilton Books
- Psychologically, the choice to think or not is the choice to focus or not. Existentially, the choice to focus or not is the choice to be conscious or not. Metaphysically, the choice to be conscious o β¦ βΆ
- If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose . . . the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used th β¦ βΆ
- I am a man who does not exist for others. β¨ Ayn Rand (1999). Ayn Rand Reader, p.78, Penguin
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