188 quotes found
“Isnt it wonderful that our bodies can give us so much pleasure? he said to her once, quite simply. They were happy and radiantly innocent. They were both incapable of the conception that joy is sin.”
“The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.”
“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. ”
“He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it or dismiss it.”
“He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings t...”
“Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart”
“The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any h...”
“It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a brilliant intelligence.”
“Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the sudden realization that nothing else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done; she neede...”
“Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.”
“You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon”
“When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete of the platform under her heels, she felt light, lifted, impelled to action. She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her st...”
“...were she lying crushed under the ruins of a building, were she torn by the bomb of an air raid, so long as she was still in existence she would know that action is mans foremost obligation, rega...”
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
“Whats wealth but the means of expanding ones life? Theres two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster.”
“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of w...”
“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code ...”
“Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You dont.”
“People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll b...”
“At a time like this, we can't afford the luxury of thinking!”
