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Quotations
more or less correct
Atlas
Shrugged by
Ayn Rand
And
because I want it so much,
I will accept no substitute.
...An adversary
worth matching.
...The tribute
of feeling free to acknowledge one's own greatness, knowing that it is
understood.
... a consciousness
like her own...[...] who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity
for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience...
It's so wonderful
to see a great, new, cruisal idea which is not mine!
... as if
some part of him had become a stranger that had to be kept numb, and his
will had to be its constant, watchful anesthetic. That part was an unknown
of which he knew only that he must never see its root and never give it
voice. He had lived through one dangerous moment which he could not allow
to return.
-
Confidence of my value - and yours.
- Are you
saying that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?"
- Of course.
The capacity
of hers to feel the joy of being, as he felt it.
Any refusal
to recognize reality, for any reason whatever, has distrastrous consequences.
There are no evil thoughts except one - the refusal to think. Don't ignore
your own desires, Mr. Reardon. Don't sacrifice them. Examine their cause.
I want nothing
from you except what you wish to give me. [...]
A trade by
which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.
[You don't
do that in business - don't do that in life]
I
don't know why it helps me, but it does - just to know that you're hearing
me. [...] I feel as if [...] there's no people and no human language left.
[The sanction of the
victim]
Even if he
did not share her standards [...] He had to let her win because she had
thrown herself upon his mercy.
Consider
the obscenity of offering their impotence and their need - their need
of you - as a justification for your torture.
She wanted
to injure him by her contempt - but he could not be injured, unless he
respected her judgement. [...] An issue of quilt, he thought, had to rest
on his own acceptance of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty.
He did not accept it; he never had.
Dagny, we
can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form
at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose remains the same and
the forms are ours to make.
- if he were
not what you know him to be, would your body bring you to this?
No one's
happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
It was for
the best of his virtues that Lilian had chosen him [...]
as one chooses an object of love, as the symbol of man's living power,
but the destruction of that power had been her goal.
To remain
alive, he must think. [...] the fact that man is a being of volitional
consciousness.
Do you cry
that you find no answers? By what means did you hope to find them? You
reject your tool of perception - your mind - then complain that the universe
is a mystery.
Every form
of causeless selfdoubt, every feeling of inferiority and secret unworthiness
is, in fact, man's hidden dread of his inability to deal with existence.
And because
I want it so much, I will accept no substitute.
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