Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand

I am not committing the contemptible act of asking you to take me on faith.

The impossible conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right—wasn’t it the basic formula of moral corruption?

Only if one feels immensely important, she had told him, can one feel truly light.

“Tell me, Miss Taggart, what’s going to support a seven-thousand-ton train on a three-thousand-ton bridge?” “My judgment,” she answered.

Ownership—she thought, glancing back at him—weren’t there those who knew nothing of its nature and doubted its reality? No, it was not made of papers, seals, grants and permissions. There it was—in his eyes.

“You see, Dr. Stadler, people don’t want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they’ll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue—a highly intellectual virtue—out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt.”