I’m not asking you to do your best. I’m asking you to do your job.” -Dagny Taggart.
On the morning of October 31, he received a notice informing him that all of his property, including his bank accounts and safety deposit boxes, had been attached to satisfy a delinquent judgment obtained against him in a trial involving a deficiency in his personal income tax of three years ago. It was a formal notice, complying with every requirement of the law – except that no such deficiency had ever existed and no such trial had ever taken place.
They don’t even have a modern government. 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.
There were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential – to whom?
Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
But it’s a crime! It’s a crime against the nation. Don’t you know that?” “No.” “It’s against the law!” “Yes.
Miss Taggart, I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit!” Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn: “Mr. Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.
Why do you write if you have nothing you want to say?” “To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I could do. And more amusing.
We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form.
Do people sleep a lot because they’re tired or because they want to escape from something?
If they believe that the purpose of my life is to serve them, let them try to enforce their creed. If they believe that my mind is their property – let them come and get it.” “But what sort of life have you chosen? To what purpose are you giving your mind?” “To the cause of my love.” “Which is what?” “Justice.
There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act.
They were not fighting over what to do, but over whom to blame.
We were defeated by the greed, the selfishness and the base, animal nature of men. It was the eternal conflict between spirit and matter, between soul and body. They would not renounce their bodies, which was all we asked of them.
I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written – and published – is my proof that they do.
We are all trained by today’s colleges never to take a firm stand on any subject: to be pragmatists, ready to compromise with anyone on anything. Philosophy and morality, however, do not work by compromise. Just as a healthy body cannot compromise with poison, so too a good man cannot compromise with evil ideas. In such a set up, an evil philosophy, like poison, always wins. The good can win only by being consistent. If it is not, then the evil is given the means to win every time.
Years ago, a well-known political writer, Isabel Paterson, was talking to a businessman outraged by some government action. She urged him to speak up for his principles. “I agree with you totally,” he said, “but I’m not in a position right now to do it.” “The only position required,” she replied, “is vertical.
There is no way to make a human being accept the role of a sacrificial animal except by destroying his self-esteem. There is no way to destroy his self-esteem except by making him reject his own consciousness. There is no way to make him reject his own consciousness except by convincing him of its impotence.
The secret of the Witch Doctor’s power lies in the fact that man needs an integrated view of life, a philosophy, whether he is aware of his need or not – and whenever, through ignorance, cowardice or mental sloth, men choose not to be aware of it, their chronic sense of guilt, uncertainty and terror makes them feel that the Witch Doctor’s philosophy is true.
The plan was that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability, but would be paid according to his need.
Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to expect of the human race.