“Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work.”

—  Ayn Rand , book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

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Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982

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