Atlas Shrugged
The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, 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 yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth.
—from John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, who died on this day in 1982
3 comments:
I was enamored with Ayn Rand for a very short time after I read The Fountainhead. Then I read Atlas Shrugged and realized she was insane. It is all very well to lookout for yourself but we really need to look out for each other as well.
Briefly, if you do not look out for yourself you will soon be unable to look out for anyone else. Not unlike many people, you do not understand Rand's position which does not preclude such virtues as benevolence and civility, and includes both respecting and valuing other individuals in one's rational philosophy of life.
She made that distinctly unapparent in Atlas Shrugged.
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