![]() ![]() ![]() Rand also believed there is no God and no afterlife, and expected that when she died she would really cease to be: finished, dust, no more Ayn Rand. ![]() Her ideas were discussed in university classrooms and on "The Tonight Show," on which she appeared more than once. She produced not just best-selling fiction but cerebral tracts on economics, politics, love, aesthetics and other subjects. The books and the philosophy made her famous, a certified member of that rare breed, the celebrity intellectual. One of Rand's most popular nonfiction books is called "The Virtue of Selfishness." Known today as objectivism, it holds that the highest purpose of existence is to live for oneself, and that altruism is evil. Hundreds stood in line on the sidewalk outside the funeral parlor, waiting to file past the corpse of the woman who had written the hugely popular novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." All her novels revolve around heroic characters - architect Howard Roark, engineer John Galt, railroad magnate Dagny Taggart - who live according to a bracing philosophy that Rand herself invented. There were many fans there that cold March night in Manhattan. ![]() When Ayn Rand died in 1982, she was laid out in an open casket beside a six-foot-tall floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign, her favorite symbol. ![]()
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