Atlas Shrugged, by
Ayn Rand
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
Part 1, chapter one
Who
is John Galt?
Pg.
3
"Go
get your cup of coffee," he said, handing the dime to the shadow that had
no face.
Pg.
3
Part 1, chapter two
He
never felt loneliness except when he was happy.
Pg.
29
He
wanted to utter an angry denial, but she was smiling at him as if this were
merely a conversational joke, and he had no capacity for the sort of
conversations which were not supposed to be meant, so he did not answer.
Pg.
33
They
professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things
for which he could wish to be loved.
Pg.
37
He
knew that it was necessary to have a man to protect him from the legislature;
all industrialists had to employ such men. But he had never given much attention
to this aspect of his business; he could not quite convince himself that it was
necessary.
Pg.
40
Part 1, chapter three
He
could talk as he did not talk anywhere else, admitting things he would not
confess to anyone, thinking aloud, looking into the attentive eyes of the
worker across the table.
Pg.
62
Part 1, chapter four
She
had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were
unnecessary.
Pg.
76
"Why
don't you want to fight?"
"Because
they had the right to do it."
Pg.
77
"I
don't care what the courts decide. I promised to obey the majority. I have to
obey."
Pg.
77
Nothing
can make it moral to destroy the best.
Pg.
78
"You
and I will always be there to save the country from the consequences of their
actions."
Pg.
84
Part 1, chapter five
She
felt pleasure from the dull, hot pain in her cheek and from the taste of blood
in the corner of her mouth. She felt pleasure in what she suddenly grasped
about him, about herself and about his motive.
Pg.
100
When
she came home, she told her mother that she had cut her lip by falling against
a rock. It was the only lie she ever told. She did not do it to protect Francisco;
she did it because she felt, for some reason which she could not define, that
the incident was a secret too precious to share.
Pg.
101
All
right, Taggart transcontinental, now it's a race. Let's see who will do greater
honor, you - to Nat Taggart, or I - to Sebastian d'Anconia.
Pg.
101
The
first ball is the most romantic event of one's life.
Pg.
103
She
knew that fear was useless, that he would do what he wished, that the decision
was his, that he left nothing possible to her except the thing she wanted most
- to submit.
Pg.
108
It
was a smile that told her he was in control of himself, of her, of everything,
and ordered her to forget what she had seen in that first moment.
Pg.
112
I
wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that's intelligent
though a woman's.
Pg.
118
Now
the planners are asking their people not to blame the government, but to blame
the depravity of the rich, because I turned out to be an irresponsible playboy,
instead of the greedy capitalist I was expected to be.
Pg.
123
That
money went to men who grow rich by such methods. Such men do not remain rich
for long. The money will go into channels which will carry it, not to the most
productive, but to the most corrupt. By the standards of our time, the man who
has the least to offer is the man who wins.
Pg.
124
Part 1, chapter six
When
a problem came up at the mills, his first concern was to discover what error he
had made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own; it was of himself
that he demanded perfection. He would grant himself no mercy now; he took the
blame.
Pg.
128
The
editorial said that at a time of dwindling production, shrinking markets and vanishing
opportunities to make a living, it was unfair to let one man hoard several
business enterprises, while others had none; it was destructive to let a few
corner all the resources, leaving others no chance; competition was essential
to society, and it was societies duty to see that no competitor ever rose
beyond the range of anybody who wanted to compete with him.
Pg.
130
"The
philosophers of the past were superficial," Dr. Pritchett went on.
"It remained for our century to redefine the purpose of philosophy. The
purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove
to them that there isn't any."
Pg.
132
They
say he hides in one of those Norwegian fjords where neither God nor man will
ever find him. That's where the Vikings used to hide in the Middle Ages.
Pg.
152
Part 1, chapter seven
She
had stopped for blank moments and the middle of her office, paralyzed by
despair at the rigidity of time which she could not stretch any further - on a
day when urgent appointments had succeeded one another...
Pg.
165
It
was useless to argue, she thought, and to wonder about people who would neither
refute an argument nor accept it.
Pg.
183
"...
they're calling it a victory for anti-greed."
She
laughed aloud. "I can see where such a distortion of the English language
would make you furious," he said.
Pg.
213
Part 1, chapter eight
People
said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said
and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons.
Pg.
228
"There
are no objective facts," he had said. "Every report on facts is only
somebody's opinion. It is, therefore, useless to write about facts."
Pg.
229
Part 1, chapter nine
It's
the worst government in any state. The laziest. It does nothing - outside of
keeping law courts and a police department. It doesn't do anything for the
people. It doesn't help anybody. I don't see why all our best companies want to
run there.
Pg.
271
That
book said that there was a time when men were thinking of it - they worked on
it, they spent years on experiments, but they couldn't solve it and they gave
it up. It was forgotten for generations. I didn't think that any living
scientists ever thought of it now. But someone did. Someone has solved it, now,
today!
Pg.
289
"Those
men, long ago, tried to invent a motor that would draw static electricity from
the atmosphere, convert it and create its own power as it went along. They
couldn't do it. They gave it up." She pointed at the broken shape.
"But there it is."
Pg.
289
By
what right are they all doing it? By what right?
Pg.
299
I
don't want to run the national economy! I want your national economy runners to
leave me alone!
Pg.
299
Part 1, chapter ten
Pipe
down - keep down - slow down - don't do your best, it is not wanted!
Pg.
301
I
intended to ship you the ore, so you can't blame me, because my intention was
completely honest.
Pg.
301
I
granted them the loan for the purchase of that factory, because they needed the
money. If people needed money, that was enough for me. Need was my standard,
Miss Taggart. Need, not greed.
Pg.
310
…it
was as if a New York skyscraper had vanished one night, leaving nothing behind
but a vacant lot on a street corner.
Pg.
316
Part 2, chapter 1
No,
no, but the sudden disappearance of a major supply wrought havoc in the entire
oil market. So the government had to assume control and impose oil rationing on
the country, in order to protect the essential enterprises.
Pg.
344
The
feeblest imbecile should be able to see the glaring contradictions in every one
of your statements."
"Let's
put it this way, Dr. Stadler: the man who doesn't see that, deserves to believe
all my statements."
Pg.
346
She
had screamed when Ellis Wyatt went; she had gasped when Andrew Stockton
retired; when she heard that Lawrence Hammond quit, she asked impassively,
"Who's next?"
Pg.
350
Part 2, chapter one
The
boy had no inkling of any concept of morality; it had been bred out of him by
his college...
Pg.
362
When
he had grasped the implications of his laughter, he had known that he was now
condemned to constant vigilance against himself. Like the survivor of a heart
attack, he knew that he had had a warning and that he carried within him a
dangerous that could strike him at any moment.
Pg.
363
You
ask too many why's.
Pg.
364
I
could tell you - as my reason - that I do not wish to sell my Metal to those whose
purpose is kept secret from me. I created that Metal.
Pg.
365
But
there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to
manufacturer the weapons for his own murderers.
Pg.
365
Drive
down there with your trucks - like any other looter, but without his risk,
because I won’t shoot you, as you know I can't - take as much of the Metal as
you wish and go. Don't try to send me payment. I won't accept it. ... You need
my help to make it look like a sale - like a safe, just, moral transaction. I
will not help you.
Pg.
366
Part 2, chapter two
But
both, unknown to each other, were drawing a mental chart of the faces they saw,
classifying them under two headings which, if named, would have read:
"Favor" and "Fear." There were men whose presence signified
a special protection extended to James Taggart, and men whose presence
confessed a desire to avoid his hostility -
Pg.
393
Money
is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and
men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principal that men
who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.
... Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you
considered evil?
Pg.
410
Those
pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor - your claim
upon the energy of men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that
somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that
moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
Pg.
410
Try
to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to
discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but
physical motions - and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the
goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
Pg.
410
Wealth
is the product of man's capacity to think.
Pg.
411
Is
money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not
invent it? Is money made by the intelligence at the expense of the fools? By
the able at the expense of the incompetent?
Pg.
411
Money
is made - before it can be looted or
mooched - made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his
ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has
produced.
Pg.
411
To
trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.
Pg.
411
Money
allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary
choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money
permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they're worth to
the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to
mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you
the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own
injury, for their gain not their loss - the recognition that they are not
beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery - that you must offer
them values, not wounds - that the common bond among men is not the exchange of
suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your
weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that
you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.
Pg.
411
Money
will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants;
money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what
to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice
of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration
for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
Pg.
411
If
an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
Pg.
412
Money
is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not
redeem your vices.
Pg.
412
Money
is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not
by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need
to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is
flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men
get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you
against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being
rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your Society
is doomed.
Pg.
413
Whenever
destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's
protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave
to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards
and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values.
Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage
on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected
to produce it.
Pg.
413
When
you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do
not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming
the fodder of the immoral.
Pg.
413
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only
time in history, a country of money - and I have no higher, more
reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason,
justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and
money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only
fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real
maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being - the
self-made man - the American industrialist.
Pg. 414
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of
Americans, I would choose - because it contains all the others - the fact that
they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language
or nation had ever used those words before; men had always thought of wealth as
a static quantity to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained
as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be
created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
Pg. 414
I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way,
but I don't feel that you're right,
so I know that you're wrong.
Pg. 415
I don't know, we'll have to see, we'll have to decide
whether we'll permit you to make any profits or not.
Pg. 421
Money is the root of all evil - so I just got tired of
being evil.
Pg. 422
Part
2, chapter three
Hank, I knew you were married. I knew what I was doing. I
chose to do it. There's nothing that you owe me, no duty that you have to
consider.
Pg. 425
My way of trading is to know that the joy you give me is
paid for by the joy you get from me - not by your suffering or mine. I don't
accept sacrifices and I don't make them.
Pg. 425
If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of
the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the
other loses is a fraud. You don't do it in business, Hank. Don't do it in your
own life.
Pg. 425
Do you know your only real guilt? With the greatest
capacity for it, you've never learned to enjoy yourself.
Pg. 427
Then I want you to come home and face the only person who
knows you for what you really are, who knows the actual value of your word, of
your honor, of your integrity, of your vaunted self-esteem. I want you to face,
in your own home, the one person who despises you and has the right to do so.
Pg. 431
Somewhere outside of him and apart, as if he were reading
it in a brain not his own, he observed the thought that there was some flaw in
the scheme of the punishment she wanted him to bear, something wrong by its own
terms, aside from its propriety or justice, some practical miscalculation that
would demolish it all if discovered.
Pg. 431
I don't want to help the looters to pretend that private
property still exists.
Pg. 446
When you strain your energy to its utmost in order to
produce the best, do you expect to be rewarded for it or punished? ... If you
were punished, instead -what sort of code have you accepted?
Pg. 452
... whining rotters who never rouse themselves to any
effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing clerk, but demand the income
of a company president, who drift from failure to failure and expect you to pay
their bills, who hold their wishing as an equivalent of your work and their
need as a higher claim to reward than your effort,
Pg. 453
You take pride in setting no limit to your endurance, Mr.
Rearden, because you think that you are doing right. What if you aren't? What
if you're placing your virtue in the service of evil and letting it become a
tool for the destruction of everything you love, respect and admire?
Pg. 453
"...if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on
his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his
knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold up the world aloft
with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world
bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"... What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
Pg. 455
He saw Francisco giving orders to the men around him. They
did not know who he was or where he came from, but they listened: they knew he
was a man who knew his job.
Pg. 459
Part
2, chapter four
I've tried never to remind you that you're living on my
charity. I thought that it was your place to remember it.
Pg. 469
"...I just wanted to say...because tomorrow is your
trial...and whatever they do to you is supposed to be in the name of all the
people... I just wanted to say that I...that it won't be in my name... even if there's nothing I can
do about it, except to tell you... even if I know that doesn't mean
anything."
"It means much more than you suspect."
Pg. 473
...if it had not been for men who broke regulations and
hampered the government's plans, prosperity would have been achieved long ago;
Pg. 476
...if they believe that they may seize my property simply
because they need it - well, so does any burglar. There is only this
difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act.
Pg. 477
I will not help you to preserve an appearance of
righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve
an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final
argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.
Pg. 479
Part
2, chapter five
When people were starving, said the newspapers, one
did not have to feel concern over the failures of business enterprises which
were only private ventures for private profit.
Pg. 497
"Storms are an act of God," wrote Bertram
Scudder, "and nobody can be held socially responsible for the
weather."
Pg. 498
Maybe you can't afford to give them a raise, but how can
they afford to exist when the cost of living has shot sky-high? They've got to
eat, don't they?... A government that would bring the railroad rates down would
make a lot of folks grateful.
Pg. 504
You wouldn't want the government to start telling you how
to run your railroad, would you?... Our job is only to see that the people get
fair wages and decent transportation.
Pg. 506
... He was told that the river steamboat concerns had filed
suit against him demanding that his bridge be destroyed as a threat to the
public welfare. ... That same day, a local mob attacked the structure and
set fire to the wooden scaffolding. His workers deserted him, some because they
were scared, some because they were bribed by the steamboat people, and most of
them because he had no money to pay them for weeks. ... and the bridge would be
ordered torn down by the time he completed it. ... He knelt, he picked up the
tools his men had left and he started to clear the charred wreckage away from
the steel structure. ... He worked there all night. By morning, he had thought
out a plan of what he would you do to find the right man, the men of
independent judgment - to find them, to convince them, to raise the money, to
continue the bridge.
Pg. 513
The weather seemed afraid to take a stand and clung
non-committally to some sort of road's middle; Board of Directors' weather, she
thought.
Pg. 518
They had been buying machinery for doubtful owners in sales
of dubious legality, since nobody could tell who had the right to dispose of
the great, dead properties, and nobody would come to challenge the
transactions.
Pg. 518
Part
2, chapter six
They had not heard the text of Directive No. 10 - 289, but
they knew what it would contain.
Pg. 536
The family's diplomas had always hung on the wall in the
manner of a reproach to the world, because the diplomas had not automatically
produced the material equivalents of their attested spiritual value.
Pg. 537
Part
2, chapter seven
The police have been arresting them for leaving their jobs
-they're called deserters - but there's too many of them and no food to feed
them in jail, so nobody gives a damn anymore, one way or another.
Pg. 567
He felt, with a touch of mirthless amusement, that the gun
had been needed at the mills, not in the peaceful safety of loneliness and
night; what could some starving vagrant take from him, compared to what had
been taken by men who claimed to be his protectors?
Pg. 572
When robbery is done in open daylight by sanction of the
law, as it is done today, then any act of honor or restitution has to be hidden
underground.
Pg. 573
I am merely complying with a system which my fellow men
have established. If they believe that force is the proper means to deal with
one another, I am giving them what they ask for.
Pg. 575
Robin Hood... He was the man who robbed the rich and gave
to the poor. Well, I am the man who…robs the thieving poor and gives back to
the productive rich.
Pg. 576
It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and
returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of
legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor.
Pg. 577
What I actually am, Mr. Rearden, is a policeman. It is a
policeman's duty to protect men from criminals - criminals being those who
seize wealth by force. It is a policeman's duty to retrieve stolen property and
return it to its owners.
Pg. 577
There had been a time when he had been expected to think.
Now, they did not want him to think, only to obey.
Pg. 598
Part
2, chapter eight
"Do you feel that you've betrayed Taggart Transcontinental?"
"No. I... I feel that I would have betrayed it by
remaining at work."
Pg. 616
Dagny, we who have been called ‘materialists’ by the
killers of the human spirit, we're the only ones who know how little value or
meaning there is in material objects as such, because we're the ones who create
their value and meaning.
Pg. 620
Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce. But
the looters - by their own stated theory - are in desperate, permanent,
congenital need and at the blind mercy of matter.
Pg. 620
Part
2, chapter nine
The silence of her apartment and the motionless perfection
of objects that had remained just as she had left them a month before, struck
her with a sense of relief and desolation together, when she entered her living
room. The silence gave her an illusion of privacy and ownership;
Pg. 633
She had left the office earlier than she intended, unable
to summon the effort for any task that could be postponed till morning. This
was new to her - and it was new that she could now feel more at home in her
apartment than in her office.
Pg. 633
"I'm not making terms with them. They need me. They
know it. It's my terms that I'll make
them accept."
"By playing a game in which they gain benefits in
exchange for harming you?"
Pg. 636
"Within the extent of your knowledge," Francisco
said quietly, "you are right."
Pg. 641
Part
2, chapter ten
She thought of what a difference one month had made. ...
The track workers, the switchmen, the yardmen, who always greeted her, anywhere
along the line, their cheerful grins boasting that they knew who she was - had
now looked at her stonily, turning away, their faces wary and closed. She
wanted to cry to them in apology, "It's not I who’ve done it to you!"
-then had remembered that she had accepted it and that they now had the right
to hate her, that she was both a slave and a driver of slaves, and so was every
human being in the country, and hatred was the only thing that men could now
feel for one another.
Pg. 654
I think I've heard of you, ma'am - in the old days. ... You
were the lady who ran a railroad.
Pg. 657
The plan was that everybody in the factory would work
according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need.
Pg. 660
None of us knew just how the plan would work, but every one
of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And if anybody had doubts, he felt
guilty and kept his mouth shut - because they made it sound like anyone who'd opposed
the plan was a child killer at heart and less than a human. They told us that
this plan would achieve a noble ideal.
Pg. 661
They voted which men were the best, and these men were
sentenced to work overtime each night for the next six months. Overtime without
pay - because you weren't paid by time and you weren't paid by work, only by
need.
Pg. 662
We began to hide whatever ability we had, just slow down
and watch like hawks that we never worked any faster or better than the next
fellow. What else could we do, when we knew that if we did our best for 'the
family,' it's not thanks or rewards that we get, but punishment?
Pg. 662
Drink, of course, was what we all turned to, some more,
some less. Don't ask how we got the money for it. When all the decent pleasures
are forbidden, there's always ways to get the rotten ones. You don't break into
grocery stores after dark and you don't pick your fellow's pockets to buy
classical symphonies or fishing tackle, but if it's to get stinking drunk and
forget - you do.
Pg. 664
In fact, the best chance you had of getting a raise and
breathing easier for a while was a 'baby allowance.' Either that, or a major
disease.
Pg. 664
But the shiftless and the irresponsible had a field day of
it. They bred babies, they got girls in trouble, they dragged in every
worthless relative they had from all over the country, every unmarried pregnant
sister, for an extra ‘disability allowance,’ they got more sicknesses than any
doctor could disprove, they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes
- what the hell, 'the family' was paying for it! They found more ways of
getting in 'need' than the rest of us could ever imagine - they developed a
special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed.
Pg. 664
I will stop the motor of the world.
Pg. 671
...when it began to look as if some silent power were
stopping the generators of the world and the world was crumbling quietly, like
a body when its spirit is gone - then we began to wonder and to ask questions
about him. We began to ask it of one another, those of us who had heard him say
it.
Pg. 671
...the motor was needed, not to move trains, but to keep
her moving.
Pg. 672
They went the length of the train, finding no porters, no
waiters in the diner, no brakemen, no conductor. They glanced at each other
once in a while, but kept silent. They knew the stories of abandoned trains, of
the crews that vanished in sudden bursts of rebellion against serfdom.
Pg. 674
The earth was falling downward, and she felt as if its weight
were dropping off her ankles, as if the globe would go shrinking to the size of
a ball, a convict's ball she had dragged and lost.
Pg. 690
There was nothing to support her but the beat of the engine
and the minds of the man who had made the plane. But what else supports one
anywhere?
Pg. 691
Part
3, chapter one
"You know me?" Her voice was impersonal and hard.
"I've known you for many years."
"Have I known you?"
"Yes, I think so."
"What's your name?"
"John Gault."
Pg. 702
Refractor rays...By the same method as a mirage on a
desert: an image reflected from a layer of heated air. ...a screen of rays...
You hit the ray screen. Some of the rays are the kind that kill magnetic
motors.
Pg. 704
...we have no laws in this valley, no rules no formal organization
of any kind. We come here because we want rest. But we have certain customs,
which we all observe, because they pertain to the things we need rest from. So
I'll warn you now that there is one word which is forbidden in this valley: the
word 'give.'
Pg. 714
There's no such thing as a lousy job - only lousy men who
don't care to do it.
Pg. 721
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live
for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Pg. 731
I should demonstrate that humanity's darkest evil, the most
destructive horror machine among all the devices of men, is non-objective law.
Pg. 737
There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike
in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished,
and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable - except
the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have
endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race.
Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do
and what happens when they refuse to function.
Pg. 738
The pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil? We
did not seek to make fortunes any longer. It is evil to earn more than one's
bare sustenance? We take nothing but the lowliest jobs and we produce, by the
effort of our muscles, no more than we consume for our immediate needs - with
not a penny nor an inventive thought leftover to harm the world. It is evil to
succeed, since success is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? We
have ceased burdening the week with our ambition and have left them free to
prosper without us.
Pg. 741
…I could not share my profession with men who claim that
the qualification of an intellectual consists of denying the existence of the
intellect.
Pg. 741
I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some
years ago... Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you
know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless,
excruciatingly devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole
qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent
generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes
at the point of a gun.
Pg. 744
I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years
of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of
patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions
that preceded the enslavement of medicine, they discussed everything - except
the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients,
with no thought for those who were to provide it.
Pg. 744
That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too
dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards - never occurred to
those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy.
Pg. 744
"We had no rules of any kind," said Galt,
"except one. When a man took our oath, it meant a single commitment: not
to work in his own profession, not to give the world the benefit of his mind.
Each of us carried it out in a manner that he chose.
Pg. 747
So we came to set aside one month a year to spend in the
valley - to rest, to live in a rational world, to bring our real work out of
hiding, to trade our achievements - here, where achievements meant
payment, not expropriation. Each of us built his own house here, at
his own expense - for one month of life out of twelve. It made the eleven
easier to bear.
Pg. 747
Whatever part of their wealth they could salvage, they
converted into gold or machines,
Pg. 747
They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be
surprised how easy it is - when both parties hold as their moral absolute that
neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of
trade.
Pg. 748
"We never demand agreement," he said. "We
never tell anyone more than he's ready to hear."
Pg. 749
Now you know the exact nature of the choice you'll have to
make. If it seems hard, it's because you still think that it does not have to
be one or the other. You will learn that it does.
Pg. 749
Part
3, chapter two
Sebastian d'Anconia committed one error: he accepted a
system which declared that the property he had earned by right, was to be his,
not by right, but by permission. His descendants paid for that error. I have
made the last payment...
Pg. 771
I may see it, but I cannot be certain. No man can predict
the time when others will choose to return to reason.
Pg. 771
You know, of course, that there can be no collective
commitments in this valley and that families or relatives are not allowed to
come here, unless each person takes the striker's oath by his own independent
conviction. I came here, not merely for the sake of my husband's profession,
but for the sake of my own. I came here in order to bring up my sons as human
beings. I would not surrender them to the educational systems devised to stunt
a child's brain, to convince him that reason is impotent, that existence is an
irrational chaos with which he is unable to deal, and thus reduce him to a
state of chronic terror.
Pg. 785
It does take an exceptional mind and a still more
exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the brain-destroying influences of
the world's doctrines...
Pg. 786
He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the
necessity of choice. If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man,
and the grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere of
existence - by his own choice.
Pg. 791
-she thought of the world's code that worshipped white lies
as an act of mercy - she felt a stab of revulsion against that code, suddenly
seeing its full ugliness for the first time-
Pg. 794
…there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in
business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the
irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of
the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a
threat to the aims of another - if men understand that reality is an absolute
not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that
the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which
isn't.
Pg. 798
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or
to destroy.
Pg. 798
"You're leaving as our friend," said Midas
Mulligan, "and we'll be fighting everything you'll do, because we know
you're wrong, but it's not you that we'll be damning."
Pg. 807
"You are certain that I have made the wrong
decision?"
"I am."
"Do you believe that one must be responsible for one's
own errors?"
"I do."
"Then why aren't you letting me bear the consequences
of mine?"
"I am and you will."
"If I find, when it is too late, that I want to return
to this valley - why should you have to bear the risk of keeping that door open
to me?"
"I don't have to. I wouldn't do it if I had no selfish
end to gain."
"What's selfish end?"
"I want you here."
Pg. 811
Part
3, chapter three
The country is full of rumors, all sorts of rumors, about
everything, all of them dangerous. Disruptive, I mean. People seem to do
nothing but whisper. They don't believe the newspapers, they don't believe the
best speakers, they believe every vicious, scare-mongering piece of gossip that
comes floating around. There's no confidence left, no faith, no order, no... no
respect for authority.
Pg. 844
…I take my hat off to you in regard to the price you
exacted, which none of your sisters could ever have hoped to match.
Pg. 849
She knew dimly that this
was the real Hank Rearden, and no matter what form of insulting cruelty he had
once given to their first nights together, no matter how often she had seemed
as the stronger of the two, this has always been within him and at the root of
their bond - this strength of his which would protect her if ever hers were
gone.
Pg. 855
I loved you from the first day I saw you, on a flatcar on a
siding of Milford Station. I loved you when we rode in the cab of the first
engine on the John Galt Line. I loved you on the gallery of Ellis Wyatt's
house. I loved you on that next morning. You knew it. But it's I who must say
it to you, as I'm saying it now - if I am to redeem all those days and to let
them be fully what they were for both of us. I loved you. You knew it. I
didn't. And because I didn't, I had to learn it when I sat at my desk and
looked at the Gift Certificate for Rearden Metal.
Pg. 857
I had cut myself in two, as the mystics preached, and I ran
my business by one code of rules, but my own life by another.
Pg. 858
Part
3, chapter four
She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that honest
people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
Pg. 876
I don't trust anyone around me, I have nothing but enemies,
I am very lonely. Don't you know that I need you?
Pg. 876
...it's for the people. That's the difference between
business and politics - we have no selfish ends in view, no private motives,
we're not after profit, we don't spend our lives scrambling for money, we don't
have to! That's why we're slandered and misunderstood by all the greedy
profit-chasers who can't conceive of a spiritual motive or moral ideal or...
Pg. 878
Part
3, chapter five
The most able - correction:
the most selfish - of the men are gone.
Pg. 920
She had noticed it before, ever since her broadcast, ever
since the two of them had begun to appear in public together. Instead of the
disgrace he had dreaded, there was an air of awed uncertainty in people's
manner - uncertainty of their own moral precepts, awe in the presence of two
persons who dared to be certain of being right. People were looking at them
with anxious curiosity, with envy, with respect, with the fear of offending an
unknown, proudly rigorous standard, some almost with an air of apology that
seemed to say: "Please forgive us for being married." There were some
who had a look of angry malice, and a few who had a look of admiration.
Pg. 922
...but how can anybody take his own ideas seriously enough
to destroy a fortune when people need it?
Pg. 925
An Emergency State Tax has been passed in California for
the relief of the state's unemployed, in the amount of fifty per cent of any
local corporation's gross income ahead of other taxes; the California oil
companies have gone out of business.
Pg. 926
It's a moral imperative, universally conceded in our day
and age, that every man is entitled to a job.
Pg. 929
Soybeans make an excellent substitute for bread, meat,
cereals and coffee - and if all of us were compelled to add soybeans as our
staple diet, it would solve the national food crisis and make it possible to
feed more people. The greatest food for the greatest number - that's my slogan.
Pg. 938
Just as laymen leave medicine to doctors and electronics to
engineers, so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking
to the experts and have faith in the experts' higher authority. Only experts
are able to understand the discoveries of modern science, which have proved
that thought is an illusion and that the mind is a myth.
Pg. 938
Part
3, chapter five
"I think that they're crumbling and that I'll win. I
can stand it just a little longer."
"True, it's just a little longer - not till you win,
but till you learn."
Pg. 961
Part
3, chapter six
What's happened to you? What's changed you like that? You
don't seem human anymore! You keep pressing us for answers, when we haven't any
answers to give. You keep beating us with logic - what's logic at a time like
this? - what's logic when people are suffering?
Pg. 972
You sit there trembling, because you know that I'm the last
one left to save your lives - and you know that time is as short as that. Yet
you propose a plan to destroy me, a plan which demands, with an idiot's
crudeness, without loopholes, detours or escape, that I work at a loss - that I work, with every ton
I pour costing me more than I'll get for it - that I feed the last of my wealth
away until we all starve together.
Pg. 984
He had cursed these looters for their stubborn blindness?
It was he who had made it possible.
Pg. 986
They had not been blind to reality, he had - blind to the reality he himself had created.
Pg. 987
Listen, that riot... it's staged... on orders from
Washington... It's not workers... Not your
workers...
Pg. 989
Somewhere, he thought, there was this boy's mother, who had
trembled with protective concern over his groping steps, while teaching him to
walk, who had measured his baby formulas with a jeweler's caution, ... -then
had sent him to be turned into a tortured neurotic by the men who taught him
that he had no mind and must never attempt to think.
Pg. 994
EDIT NEXT QUOTE
He thought of all the living species that train their young
in the art of survival, ... yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does
not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to
the purpose of destroying his brain, ...
Pg. 994
From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last,
...
"Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen
and not heard!"
"Who are you to think? It's so because I say so!"
"Don't argue, obey!"
"Don't try to understand, believe!"
"Don’t rebel, adjust!"
"Don't stand out, belong!"
"Don't struggle, compromise!"
"Your heart is more important than your mind!"
"Who are you to know? Your parents know best!"
"Who are you to know? Society knows best!"
"Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!"
Pg. 994
Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird
plucking the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out of the
nest to struggle for survival - yet that
was what they did to their children.
Pg. 995
Part
3, chapter seven
She wondered dimly why she should feel so glad that he had found
liberation, so certain that he was right, and yet refuse herself the same
deliverance.
Pg. 1001
There's still a chance to win, but let me be the only
victim...
Pg. 1001
This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his
life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values.
Pg. 1009
We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and
unrewarded duties.
Pg. 1010
But someone had to think to keep you alive; if you choose
to default, you default on existence and you pass the deficit to some moral
man, expecting him to sacrifice his good for the sake of letting you survive by
your evil.
Pg. 1015
Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.
Pg. 1016
Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason
is his only means to gain it.
Pg. 1016
His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic,
and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself,
and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part
contradict the whole.
Pg. 1016
That which you call your soul or spirit is your
consciousness, and that would you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to
think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that
controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.
Pg. 1017
If you hold the irrational as your standard of value and
the impossible as your concept of the good, if you long for rewards you have
not earned, for a fortune or a love you don't deserve, for a loophole in the
law of causality, for an A that becomes non-A at your whim, if you desire the
opposite of existence - you will reach it.
Pg. 1021
Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who
desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds
his joy in nothing but rational actions.
Pg. 1022
Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but
by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or
the favor of others, but to earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not
consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my
pleasure as the goal of the lives of others.
Pg. 1022
Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has
convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites;
morality ends where a gun begins.
Pg. 1023
I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they
can forbid me to think.
Pg. 1024
It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only
against the man who starts its use.
Pg. 1024
He uses force to seize a value; I use it only to destroy
destruction.
Pg. 1024
Joy is not ‘the absence of pain,’ intelligence is not ‘the
absence of stupidity,’ light is not ‘the absence of darkness,’ an entity is not
‘the absence of a nonentity.’ Building is not done by abstaining from demolition;
Pg. 1024
Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated
to the will of God. ... whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension
and must be accepted on faith. ... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to
become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he
is not question.
Pg. 1027
You are now seeing the climax of the creed of the uncaused
and unearned.
Pg. 1044
Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle,
ignoring what an animal trainer could tell them - that no animal can be trained
by fear, that a tortured elephant will trample his torturer, but will not work
for him or carry his burdens...
Pg. 1044
...there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will
reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and
destruction for the sake of destruction. ...there is no way to buy him off, the
bribe he wants is your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it
in...
Pg. 1046
Then, one night at a factory meeting, I heard myself
sentenced to death by reason of my achievement.
Pg. 1048
-ask yourself whether you would be able to discover how to
till the soil and grow your food, whether you would be able to invent a wheel, a
lever, an induction coil, a generator, an electronic tube - then decide whether
man of ability are exploiters who live by the fruit of your labor and rob you of the wealth that you produce, and whether you dare to believe that you possess the
power to enslaved them.
Pg. 1048
You praise any venture that claims to be non-profit, and
damn the men who made the profits that make the venture possible. You regard as
‘in the public interest’ any project serving those who do not pay; it is not in
the public interest to provide any services for those who do the paying.
Pg. 1050
The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor
disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he
escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now
spilled in the world.
Pg. 1054
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and
the other side is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
Pg. 1054
In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death
that can win.
Pg. 1054
Once, you believed it was ‘only a compromise,’: you
conceded that it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake
of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your
children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was
selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now you are letting this greatest of
countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you
concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is
to live for the globe.
Pg. 1055
Do not say that you're afraid to trust your mind because
you know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and discarding the
little that you know? Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep
expanding it to the limit of your life.
Pg. 1058
This greatest of countries was built on my morality –
Pg. 1060
This country - the product of reason - could not survive on the morality of sacrifice.
Pg. 1061
We will rebuild America's system on the moral premise which
had been its foundation... that man is an end in himself, not the means to the
ends of others, that man's life, his freedom, his happiness are his by inalienable right.
Pg. 1061
If a man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work.
Pg. 1061
You called it selfish and cruel that men should trade value
for value - you have now established an unselfish society where they trade
extortion for extortion.
Pg. 1065
Now that you know the truth about your world, stop supporting your own destroyers. The
evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Withdraw your sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your
enemies’ terms or to win at a game where they're setting the rules.
Pg. 1066
Part
3, chapter eight
The wads of worthless paper money were growing heavier in
the pockets of the nation, but there was less and less for that money to buy.
Pg. 1082
Don't try to open that door - she was thinking, but knew
that what she was now seeing was the visual form of the statement: Don't
try to force the mind.
Pg. 1096
I think there was plenty in that speech that made sense.
Yes, sir, I do. Of course, I don't agree with every word you said - but what
the hell, you don't expect us to agree with everything, do you?
Pg. 1098
"Because... Because we wanted to speak to you in the
name of the country."
"I don't recognize your right to speak in the name of
the country."
Pg. 1099
“We want you to tell us what to do.”
“I told you what to do.”
“What?”
“Get out of the way.”
Pg. 1099
They don't believe a word of it. Some of them say that
he'll never collaborate with us. Most of them don't even believe that we've got
him. I don't know what's happened to people. They don't believe anything
anymore.
Pg. 1106
People are perishing - and it's you who could save them!
Does it matter who's right or wrong? You should join us, even if you think
we're wrong, you should sacrifice your mind to save them!
Pg. 1113
Then, with so swift and expert a movement that his
secretary's hand was unable to match it, he rose to his feet, leaning
sideways, leaving the pointed gun momentarily exposed to the sight of the world
- then standing straight, facing the cameras, looking at all his invisible
viewers, he said: "Get the hell out of my way!"
Pg. 1125
Part
3, chapter ten
"It's the end," she said. "It's the
beginning," he answered.
Pg. 1159
Film NOTES -
Young Americans for Liberty
The Atlas Society
Students for Liberty SFL
Reason
Americans for Tax Reform ATR
Official selection of 2014 Anthem the Libertarian Film
Festival
The Blaze Freedom works
