The course led them to the moment when, in answer to the highest of one’s values, one’s spirit makes one’s body become the tribute, recasting it – as proof, as sanction, as reward – into a single sensation of such intensity of joy that no other sanction of one’s existence is necessary.
If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
I mean the one that claims the pig is the symbol of love for humanity – the creature that accepts anything. As a matter of fact, the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him.
By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man–every man–is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.
Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty.
Man has the power to act as his own destroyer and that is he has acted through most of history.
I’ve wanted to want it. I should think it would be exciting to become a dissolute woman.
Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute.
Virtue is the giving of undeserved.
The strip of earthy, faintly visible outside the window, was running faster now, blending into a gray stream. Through the dry phrases of calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feel something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure of action.
We are fornicating in the sight of six billion people.
Why yes, I can,′ said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. ‘The man who uses another’s pity for him as a weapon.
The fundamental evil of government grants is the fact that men are forced to pay for the support of ideas diametrically opposed to their own. This is a profound violation of an individual’s integrity and conscience.
If you want my advice, Peter, you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.
I would have to think on a nice clean job. I don’t want to think. Not their way. It will have to be their way, no matter where I go. I want a job where I won’t have to think.
What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and the impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey?
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.
No principle ever filled anybody’s milk bottle.
I’m not asking you to do your best. I’m asking you to do your job.” -Dagny Taggart.