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Favourite Rand Excerpt

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iouswuoibev

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Being permitted to pick just one, which line or short passage from a piece of Ayn Rand literature would you choose as your favourite? Note that this should be a quoteable excerpt, so don't say "Galt's Speech" or anything of similar length.

Here's mine:

"The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity. The buildings were not Classical, they were not Gothic, they were not Renaissance. They were only Howard Roark."

I chose this as my favourite because it encapsulates how I feel about my own work.

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"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"

This is of course at the end of Galts speech and the oath required to stay in Galts Gulch. I think it sums up a rational system of ethics fairly well...

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The quote that can often bring tears to my eyes because of the sheer beauty in it, is this:

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.”

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  • 1 month later...

The excerpt where Francisco D'Aconia explains virute and guilt to Hank Reardan, where the title of the book "Atlas Shrugged" is alluded to.

"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw

Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that

he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms

trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his

strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down

upon his shoulders-what would you tell him to do?"

"I . . . don't know. What . . . could he do? What would you

tell him?"

"To shrug."

Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 3)

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"Just one?" Geez, you're killing me :P

Fine :(

"But all these discoveries won't do the stockholders any good anyway, because the stock of d'Anconia Copper will have crashed tomorrow morning, crashed like an electric bulb against concrete, crashed like an express elevator, splattering pieces of hitchhikers all over the gutters!"
*hunterrose sneaks another in when no one's looking*

"Dagny, what a magnificent waste!" :P

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Not my favorite, but a good one...

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

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Here.

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body."

Source: The Fountainhead

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"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"

This is of course at the end of Galts speech and the oath required to stay in Galts Gulch. I think it sums up a rational system of ethics fairly well...

This has been the fundamental principle of my selfish life and the reason why I refuse to pay taxes.

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From The Fountainhead ...

Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
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This has been the fundamental principle of my selfish life and the reason why I refuse to pay taxes.
Not paying taxes is selfish? That depends on the entire context, not simply on one fact.

If I take a minimum-wage job, rather than the middle-class one I currently have, with the specific intent of not paying taxes, how is that rational selfishness? In other words, earning less is not selfish, evening though not-paying taxes might be, when viewed out of context. It is easy to see that such a move would be a net detriment to me.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Ahh, so many. It's a good thing I doggy-eared my copies of Atlas and Fountainhead on the pages containing my favorite excerpts:

"Whenever anyone accuses some person of being 'unfeeling,' he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that 'to feel' is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality."

"Dagny, 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."

"Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of "knowledge; do not forgive or accept any breach of morality. Give the

benefit of the doubt to those who seek to know; but treat as potential killers those specimens of insolent depravity who make demands upon you, announcing that they have and seek no reasons, proclaiming, as a license, that they 'just feel if —or those who reject an irrefutable argument by

saying: 'It's only logic’ which means: 'It's only reality.' The only realm opposed to reality is the realm and premise of death."

"I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once - and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters."

... And the one in my signature of course. Ranil had the right idea in mind. :worry:

Edited by Elysium
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The quote that can often bring tears to my eyes because of the sheer beauty in it, is this:

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours.”

Thank you.

That quote shows what I love most with Ayn Rand.

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"I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This--my body and spirit--this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."

-Anthem

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