Quotes from book

Atlas Shrugged

“Any work is creative work if done by a thinking mind.”

“She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.”

“When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.”

“It's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence.”

“People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.”

“It is not advisable to venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.”

“She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt.”

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

“But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.”

“A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.”

“Did I feel a physical desire for him? I did. Was I moved by a passion of my body? I was. Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I have.”

“There are no contradictions. If you find one, check your premises.”

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”

“What is morality, she asked.
Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.”

“In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”

“I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.”

“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.”

“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust but to know.”