Ayn Rand
Quote
Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch — or build a cyclotron — without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think. “But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs, or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to think or not to think.’ . . . “Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. . . Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer — and that is the way he has acted through most of his history (pages 1012-1013).
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Similar Crossword Answers
| Answer | Clues |
|---|---|
| ATLAS | 1016 clues |
| MAN | 695 clues |
| MALE | 508 clues |
| DAD | 477 clues |
| TRADE | 440 clues |
| LIFE | 399 clues |
| FIGHT | 219 clues |
| CHOICE | 161 clues |
| FATHER | 105 clues |
| SUFFERING | 97 clues |
| VIRTUE | 76 clues |
| THOUGHT | 73 clues |
| GALT | 37 clues |
| VALUES | 35 clues |
| PHILOSOPHY | 31 clues |
| THINKING | 31 clues |
| FATHERS | 10 clues |
| INSTINCTS | 9 clues |
| MASCULINITY | 3 clues |
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- Ayn Rand, e.g. 80.00%
- Ayn Rand book 76.19%
- Ayn Rand hero 76.19%
- Dancer ____ Rand 73.68%
- Ayn Rand novel 72.73%
- Ayn Rand's John 69.57%
- Ayn Rand subject 66.67%
- Essayist Rand 66.67%
- Literary Rand 66.67%
- Rand 66.67%
- Ayn and Sally 66.67%
- Ayn Rand's Atlas __ 66.67%
- Novel by Ayn Rand 64.00%
- Ayn Rand shrugger 64.00%
- Firebrand Rand 63.64%
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- Ayn Rand character 61.54%
- Sally Rand prop 60.87%
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- Sally or Ayn 60.00%
Related word tools
Poet’s word, with inverted comma, for the end of the day
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E
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E
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N
Hint 1 meaning
The old plural of Eye.
Hint 2 anagram
ENE
Hint 3 another clue
AND STILL ___
6 +1