Quotes from book

Atlas Shrugged

“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.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.”

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.”

“Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart”

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

“Fransisco, you're some kind of very high nobility, aren't you?" He answered, "Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is born a d'Anconia. We are expected to become one.”

“I am, therefore I'll think”

“It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint tinge of sadness--and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its course in the shape of a question mark.”

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”

“I'll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

“I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.”

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.”

“If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others.”

“I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.”

“The most depraved type of human being… (is) the man without a purpose.”

“Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire.”

“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.”