Title: Ayn Rand
Author: Jeff Britting
Web site / Facebook / LinkedIn
How I got the book: I was sent a gift copy by the VP of Academic Programs at the Ayn Rand Institute
How long it took to read: 65 minutes / 1 reading session
Read cover-to-cover: YES / no
Favorite quotes (Page # and line):
4: Rand described her earliest approach to life as being an "enormous series" of questions aimed at understanding the things around her.
8: I could summon no interest or enthusiasm for "people as they are" - when I had in my mind a blinding picture of people as they could be.
17: Rand discovered that she enjoyed the process of breaking down complex issues and explaining the answers.
19: I suddenly had the concrete sense of how many large cities there were in the world...
39: The secret of life: You must be nothing but will. Know what you want and do it. Know what you are doing and why you are doing it, every minute of the day.
44: It is not important if your success is interrupted with stops.
44: What is important is to be in love with life; to strongly believe in yourself; it is always important to remember that the road of great people is difficult and uneven.
79: What would happen if every creative person went on strike...?
92: In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is...
92: ...he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy.
My Take Away:
I was given a copy of the book Atlas Shrugged in 1995. It took me about a year just to open up the first page. Well, I brought the book with me when I went away one summer (1996) to work at a school in South America, and started reading... I can say this book profoundly addressed my own philosophy.
Years later, I was introduced to the VP of Academic Programs at the ARI, and a few days after our phone conversation, I received a box of books in the mail. Again, it took me a while to read this one, an OVERLOOK ILLUSTRATED LIVES biography on Ayn Rand.
Of course, I picked out and have re-read the lines above. Page 44 was especially powerful for me. I look back over the past two decades and realize just how much I've learned from, failed in and tried ... all the things that have gotten me here.
In that recent interview with Dan Pink, we talked about the importance of writing things down to figure them out, as well as being focused and intent on the project at hand. Walking away from reading this short biography, I'm even more committed to focusing on the MITs ... those Most Important Things in life and at work.
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