Quotes from book
The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Russian-American author Ayn Rand, her first major literary success. The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is an individualistic young architect who designs modernist buildings and refuses to compromise with an architectural establishment unwilling to accept innovation. Roark embodies what Rand believed to be the ideal man, and his struggle reflects Rand's belief that individualism is superior to collectivism.

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“A house can have integrity, just like a person,' said Roark, 'and just as seldom.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Variant: A building has integrity just like a man. And just as seldom.
Source: The Fountainhead

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“One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you… Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“She did not know what it was about him that had always made her want to see him broken.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness…”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“I don't want to see you. I don't like you. I don't like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You're impertinent. You're too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand photo

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“Don't worry. They're all against me. But I have one advantage: they don't know what they want. I do.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“It's such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don't even know that you're being subtle and vicious”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

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“Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead