Ayn Rand - your invitation to independent thought

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision."
Ayn Rand

To live a full life, we have to consider the full spectrum of human thought. Once past the narrow confines of our culturally imposed ideas we can blossom like a replanted, root bound rose.

"The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it."
Ayn Rand

Life is too interesting, and too valuable, to be bound by antiquated concepts.

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."
Ayn Rand

Think
Don't follow.

"People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk."
Ayn Rand

"Loved, hated, and always controversial, the best-selling author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is more relevant than ever."
Cathy Young - Reason Magazine

"Rand is better taken as a goldmine for ideas than as authoritative doctrine." - Kelley L. Ross

* "The next time you read Atlas Shrugged, consider that we are in a new era. The industrial and bureaucratic types used by Ayn Rand belong to a failing age. There is one example that fits well with our emerging Netcohort Age; that is the composer, Richard Halley. His production was not bound by physical restrictions that made it a captive for extortion. Instead, like netcohort individuals and their flexible, creative teams; his value moved with him - their wealth is in their minds." - Allan Wallace

To read how I reconcile a lens about Ayn Rand with (gasp) altruism, see the Dr. Margarita Pereyda lens. To find out "Who is John Galt," read Atlas Shrugged.

In one of her essays, Ayn Rand wrote what may be one source of her objectivist philosophies:

* "There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days -- the conviction that ideas matter. In one's youth that conviction is experienced as a self-evident absolute, and one is unable fully to believe that there are people who do not share it. That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth." - Ayn Rand

images from Atom's photo blog. Go take a look, I'll wait.

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"Civilization's development has always been initiated by individuals balancing demands within their intimate groups against personal needs for independence and identity. Social engineers and planners always err at this point. What they endeavor is to convert humankind from small, intimate, flexible tribes to a collective with one mind (their mind of course).

They want to make all the complex human herds and packs of individuals into a single hive of drones. They have always failed, they will always fail; for outstanding individuals will continue to emerge - imagining and accomplishing exceptional goals - changing everything." - Allan R. Wallace


This Ayn Rand review page had a fine period as LOTD, an occasional honor offered by the editors of Squidoo, Every now and then they crown a lens - Lens Of The Day - as an example of what can be accomplished with the tools on this site. Some might consider this page too controversial to win an award; but some might consider it too controversial that you are allowed to read what you want and think for yourself. Think - don't follow, find your own road and walk it.



100% of direct income from my lenses goes to micro-finance solutions for world poverty provided by the Grameen Foundation. The Grameen Foundation is creating a rising tide of positive influence upon our world. Help decrease poverty, by enabling the poor to support themselves.

Will YOUR life be based on what you want to use it to accomplish, or by random urges of what you want to do?

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