"With all due respect , my tradition is older than yours, older than anyone else's. My profession was the first one man ever made, and it'll be the last one to go [in response to being called a Silver-Grey]. It's the one that makes all the others possible. So what do you say?" He held up the card [of the Warmind's instructions] for the third time. "Does our civilization deserve to live, or not?" — Marshall Atkins
The Golden Age — John C. Wright
Dear Miss Wodlinger:
... A book cannot be "ruined" through a film or "through the interpretations of some of its readers," as you say. Nothing can ruin a book. It is a completed entity. Misinterpretations are merely the misfortune of those who make them.
—The Letters of Ayn Rand
