Quotes from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
“It was the joy of admiration and of one's own ability, growing together.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 51)
“He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had the right to stop him.”
— Narrator (referring to Nathaniel Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 59)
“Against whom is any union organized?”
— Narrator (referring to 'a skeptic')
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 4, Page 74)
“This was reality, she thought, this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 4, Page 87)
“...pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 5, Page 116)
“If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 6, Page 146)
“I never believed that story. I thought by the time the sun was exhausted, men would find a substitute.”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 171)
“This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 171)
“Now she was free for the simplest, most commonplace concerns of the moment, because nothing could be meaningless within her sight.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 171)
“It was useless to argue, she thought, and to wonder about people who would neither refute an argument nor accept it.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 183)
“Mr. Ward, what is it that the foulest bastards on earth denounce us for, among other things? Oh yes, for our motto of 'Business as usual.' Well—business as usual, Mr. Ward!”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 212)
“Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act... Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice... Thought sets one's purpose and the way to reach it.”
— Narrator (referring to Hank Rearden)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 7, Page 214)
“...the sight of an achievement was the greatest gift a human being could offer to others.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 8, Page 237)
“It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but to know.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 8, Page 240)
“Don't ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 10, Page 297)
“He knew no weapons but to pay for what he wanted, to give value, to ask nothing of nature without trading his effort in return, to ask nothing of men without trading the product of his effort.”
— Narrator (referring to Hank Rearden)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 10, Page 303)
“By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist.”
— Hugh Akston
Atlas Shrugged (Part 1, Chapter 10, Page 303)
“There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 1, Page 365)
“...a desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal which is worth achieving.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 1, Page 374)
“...man exists for the achievement of his desires...”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 398)
“Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. 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.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 410)
“...man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 410)
“Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 411)
“Money is made... made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 411)
“...when men live by trade... it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability...”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 411)
“...the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 412)
“There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 418)
“Love is our response to our highest values — and can be nothing else.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 4, Page 490)
“Only the man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable of the depravity of a desire devoid of love.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 4, Page 491)
“...no human being can hold on another a claim demanding that he wipe himself out of existence.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 5, Page 529)
“...joy is the core of existence, the motive power of every living being... it is the need of one's body as it is the goal of one's spirit...”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 6, Page 564)
“When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 6, Page 565)
“...he knew that man must live by his own rational perception of reality, that he cannot act against it or escape it or find a substitute for it—and that there is no other way for him to live.”
— Narrator (referring to Bill Brent)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 7, Page 602)
“A circle... is the movement proper to physical nature... but the straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from a start to an end.”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 8, Page 609)
“You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production.”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 8, Page 620)
“They told us that this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know otherwise? Hadn't we heard it all our lives—from our parents and our schoolteachers and our ministers, and in every newspaper we ever read and every movie and every public speech?”
— The Tramp
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 10, Page 661)
“She felt suddenly as if nothing existed beyond that circle, and she wondered at the joyous, proud comfort to be found in a sense of the finite, in the knowledge that the field of one's concern lay within the realm of one's sight.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 716)
“They're all aristocrats, that's true... because they know that there's no such thing as a lousy job–only lousy men who don't care to do it.”
— Ellis Wyatt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 721)
“What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster.”
— Ellis Wyatt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 721)
“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.”
— Ellis Wyatt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 722)
“Any man who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong.”
— Ken Danagger
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 725)
“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.”
— Inscription
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 731)
“Through all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality to practice–it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction–only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 738)
“...the United States. This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man's mind.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 770)
“When nothing seems worth the effort–said some stern voice in her mind–it's a screen to hide a wish that's worth too much; what do you want?”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 775)
“There's only one passion in most artists more violent than their desire for admiration: their fear of identifying the nature of such admiration as they do receive.”
— Richard Halley
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 782)
“Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes–which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification–which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.”
— Richard Halley
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 782)
“Every man builds his world in his own image... He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”
— Hugh Akston
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 791)
“No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 798)
“Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right... but not the fact that we are certain. If you are not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don't be tempted to substitute our judgment for your own.”
— Hugh Akston
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 802)
“She was seeing the brand of pain and fear on the faces of people, and the look of evasion that refuses to know it–they seemed to be going through the motions of some enormous pretense, acting out a ritual to ward off reality, letting the earth remain unseen and their lives unlived, in dread of something namelessly forbidden–yet the forbidden was the simple act of looking at the nature of their pain and questioning their duty to bear it.”
— Narrator (referring to Dagny Taggart)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 3, Page 831)
“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, comdemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 3, Page 859)
“She had learned... that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.”
— Narrator (referring to Cherryl Brooks)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 4, Page 876)
“You don't have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is–say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”
— Dagny Taggart
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 4, Page 890)
“...through all the generations of political extortion, it was not the looting bureaucrats who had taken the blame, but the chained industrialists, not the men who peddled legal flavors, but the men who were forced to buy them; and through all those generations of crusades against corruption, the remedy had always been, not the liberating of the victims, but the granting of wider powers for extortion to the extortionists. The only guilt of the victims, he thought, had been that they accepted it as guilt.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 5, Page 933)
“It was a sense of extreme precision and of relaxation, together, a sense of action without strain, which seemed inexplicably youthful–until he realized that this was the way he had acted and had expected always to act, in his youth and what he now felt was like the simple, astonished question: Why should one ever have to act in any other manner?”
— Narrator (referring to Hank Rearden)
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 6, Page 976)
“From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. 'Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!'–'Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!'–'Don't argue, obey!'–'Don't try to understand, believe!'–'Don't rebel, adjust!–'Don't stand out, belong!'–'Don't struggle, compromise!'–'Your heart is more important than your mind!'–'Who are you to know? Your parents know best!'–'Who are you to know? Society knows best!'–'Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!'–'Who are you to object? All values are relative!'–'Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!'”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 6, Page 994)
“An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil... Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,013)
“Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice... Man has to be a man–by choice; he has to hold his life as a value–by choice; he has to learn to sustain it–by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,013)
“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.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,014)
“Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,017)
“Your mind is your only judge of truth–and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,017)
“...a 'moral commandment' is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,018)
“Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it–that no substitute can do your thinking...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,019)
“...Courage is the practical form of being true to existence, of being true to truth, and confidence is the practical form of being true to one's own consciousness.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,019)
“Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification–that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,019)
“Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live–that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values–that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,020)
“...your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,020)
“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned–that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character–that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,020)
“Emotions are inherent in your nature, but their content is dictated by your mind. Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,021)
“Happiness is a state of noncontradictory joy–a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction...”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,022)
“The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,022)
“Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,023)
“If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?... Why is it immoral for your to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away?”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,031)
“A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness–non-existence–as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw–the zero.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,032)
“To love is to value.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,033)
“Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,034)
“'Public welfare' is the welfare of those who do not earn it; those who do, are entitled to no welfare.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,050)
“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,054)
“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,054)
“Every form of causeless self-doubt, every feeling of inferiority and secret unworthiness is, in fact, man's hidden dread of his inability to deal with existence.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,057)
“To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,057)
“...an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,058)
“...the source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A–and Man is Man.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,061)
“All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man's mind and labor.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,062)
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,062)
“...when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus:the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,064)
“Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing, but it's only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to which he'll rise.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,064)
“The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,066)
“All life is a purposeful struggle, and your only choice is the choice of a goal.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,068)
“Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,069)
“When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.”
— John Galt
Atlas Shrugged (Part 3, Chapter 8, Page 1,104)
Quotes compiled by Ovi Demetrian Jr | Buy the book