A google search of this proverb returned:
when the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.
synonyms: source, origin, genesis, fountainhead, inspiration, stimulus; literary wellspring
While coincidental that fountainhead appeared in the list of synonyms, it was inspirational and stimulating as well.
Consider the source, origin and genesis of Miss Rand’s philosophy from the introduction of The Romantic Manifesto.
As a child, I saw a glimpse of the pre-World War I world, the last afterglow of the most radiant cultural atmosphere in human history (achieved not by Russian, but by Western culture). So powerful a fire does not die at once: even under the Soviet regime, in my college years, such works as Hugo’s Ruy Blas and Schiller’s Don Carlos were included in theatrical repertories, not as historical revivals, but as part of the contemporary esthetic scene. Such was the level of the public’s intellectual concerns and standards. If one has glimpsed that kind of art—and wider: the possibility of that kind of culture—one is unable to be satisfied with anything less.
She spends the next couple of paragraphs concertizing her assessment of the downward descent she observed going on around her before adding:
Renunciation is not one of my premises. If I see that the good is possible to men, yet it vanishes, I do not take “Such is the trend of the world” as a sufficient explanation. I ask such questions as: Why?—What caused it?—What or who determines the trends of the world? (The answer is: philosophy.)
The chapter on Ayn Rand from Burgess Laughlin’s book, The Power and the Glory, highlights, in terms of essentials, many milestones of this quest.
Ok. So Miss Rand wrote her fictional opus’, and published many of her findings. What about the fire she lit. Is “[t]he glow was red and still, like the reflection of a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.” A philosophy, printed in the pages of a book, sitting on a shelf is not the same as the philosophy that that determines the trends of the world.
Near the beginning of Galt’s speech, Rand builds up to and sets the tone for some elaboration.
"Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. . . . But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time.
Movies, books, news broadcasts, talk at the coffee counter are replete with conversations that blame the problems in the world on human nature. But when a man is on trial in a courtroom, assuming an objective system of law, it is not man on trial, it is a particular man on the basis of his particular moral code. In a structured environment, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense, are bound by the rules of justice as to what constitutes as evidence for and against guilt. This rigor is not necessarily employed at the water cooler, where the ongoing informal trial unfolds on a daily basis. Yet it is the verdict of these informal public juries that decide the outcome of presidential elections, local millages, or the informal conclusions about what determines the trends of the world. At this point in the juncture, it is this informal courtroom that will ultimately determine the success or failure of ‘Operation Objectivism.’
It is the wellspring of ideas that irrigate the moral landscape. Moral gardeners need to learn to identify and pull the weeds from the desired flora, as well as how to best care for and cultivate fertile minds for a proper moral code to flourish.