The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

“Lois Cook said that words must be freed from the oppression of reason.

“Jules Fougler said in last Sunday’s Banner that in the world of the future the theater will not be necessary at all. He says that the daily life of the common man is as much a work of art in itself as the best Shakespearean tragedy.

“Gordon Prescott says that four walls and a ceiling is all there is to architecture. The floor is optional. All the rest is capitalistic ostentation.

He says nobody should be allowed to build anything anywhere until every inhabitant of the globe has a roof over his head

dialectic

“Worry is a waste of emotional reserves. Very foolish. Unworthy of an enlightened person. Since we are merely the creatures of our chemical metabolism and of the economic factors of our background, there’s not a damn thing we can do about anything whatever. So why worry?

stopped believing in you, there would be nothing ... anywhere.”

“I’m sorry to see that you haven’t understood me at all. In all these years, you’ve learned nothing of my principles. I don’t believe in individualism, Peter. I don’t believe that any one man is any one thing which everybody else can’t be. I believe we’re all equal and interchangeable. A position you hold today can be held by anybody and everybody tomorrow. Equalitarian rotation. Haven’t

always preached that to you? Why do you suppose I chose you? Why did I put you where you were? To protect the field from men who would become irreplaceable. To leave a chance for the Gus Webbs of this world. Why do you suppose I fought against—for instance—Howard Roark?”

When you deal in principles, Peter, it saves

you the trouble of individual encounters.”

Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the

secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. I’ll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed. But that’s not the motive of my work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward.”

“You said yesterday: ‘What architect isn’t interested in housing?’ I hate the whole blasted idea of it. I think it’s a worthy undertaking—to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole. That’s what’s happening in New York. Nobody can afford a modern apartment—except the

very rich and the paupers. Have you seen the converted brownstones in which the average self-supporting couple has to live? Have you seen their closet kitchens and their plumbing? They’re forced to live like that—because they’re not incompetent enough. They make forty dollars a week and wouldn’t be allowed into a housing project. But they’re the ones who provide the money for the damn project. They pay the taxes. And the taxes raise their own rent. And they have to move from a converted brownstone into an unconverted one and from that into a railroad flat. I’d have no desire to penalize a man because he’s worth only fifteen dollars a week. But I’ll be damned if I can see why a man worth forty must be penalized—and penalized in favor of the one who’s less competent.

Sure, there are a lot of theories on the subj...

discussion. But just look at the results. Still, architects are all for government housing. And have you ever seen an architect who wasn’t screaming for planned cities? I’d like to ask him how he can be so sure that the plan adopted will be his own. And if it is, what right has he to impose it on the others? And if it isn‘t, what happens to his work? I suppose he’ll say that he wants neither. He wants a council, a conference, co-operation and collaboration. And the result will be ‘The March of the Centuries.’ Peter, every single one of you on that com...

“I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn’t matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there’s nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I’ve got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That’s the only way I function. That’s all I am.”

“Then here’s what I’m offering you: I’ll design Cortlandt. You’ll put your name on it. You’ll keep all the fees. But you’ll guarantee that it will be built exactly as I design it.”

“You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the money. You’ll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I—I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.”

“You’re getting more than I am, Howard.” “Peter!” The voice was triumphant. “You understand that?” “Yes....”

“Now relax, Peter. Want a drink? We won’t discuss any details tonight. Just sit here and get used to me. Stop being afraid of me. Forget everything you said yesterday. This wipes it off. We’re starting from the beginning. We’re partners now. You have your share to do. It’s a legitimate share. This is my idea of co-operation, by the way. You’ll handle people. I’ll do the building. We’ll each do the job we know best, as honestly as we can.”

I don’t make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I’m an utter egotist.”

haven’t shown it to anyone.” His fingers fumbled, opening the straps. “Not to mother or Ellsworth Toohey ... I just want you to tell me if there’s any ...” He handed to Roark six of his canvases. Roark looked at them, one after another. He took a longer time than he needed. When he could trust himself to lift his eyes, he shook his head in silent answer to the word Keating had not pronounced. “It’s too late, Peter,” he said gently. Keating nodded. “Guess I ... knew that.” When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was sick with pity. He had never felt this before—not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him. Those moments had

been clean. But this was pity—this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling—his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect. This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

X

Peter runs into Katie and they have tea. Peter apologies but it’s too little and way too late. She is past the pain, is holding no grudge but is still bitter but won’t give him any acceptance of his apology. She trivializes all of it and then leaves him sitting at the cafe. She clearly has her revenge finally. And he is crushed by it. All very sad. The entire chapter. ☹️😢

Katie, why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things—they’re not even desires—they’re things people do to escape from desires—because it’s such a big responsibility, really to want something.” “Peter, what you’re saying is very ugly and selfish.”

“Katie ... Katie, let’s say that this doesn’t count—this, now—it’s past counting anyway, isn’t it? This can’t touch what it was like, can it, Katie? ... People always regret that the past is so final, that nothing can change it—but I’m glad it’s so. We can’t spoil it. We can think of the past, can’t we? Why shouldn’t we? I mean, as you said, like grown-up people, not fooling ourselves, not trying to hope, but only

to look back at

“Yes, I think it’s agreeable to look back occasionally. But one’s perspective widens.

One grows richer spiritually with the years.”

He thought that he had believed it was a simple sequence, the past and the present,

and if there was loss in the past one was compensated by pain in the present, and pain gave it a form of immortality—but he had not known that one could destroy like this, kill retroactively—so that to her it had never existed.

Avarice.

Look at Peter Keating.” “You look at him. I hate his guts.” “I’ve looked at him—at what’s left of him—and it’s helped me to understand. He’s paying the

price and wondering for what sin and telling

himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn’t want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn’t want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an...

truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.” “I think Toohey understands that.

“That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’

Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing.

Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. 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.”

If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.”

He thought: I haven’t mentioned to him the worst second-hander of all—the man who goes after power.

ostentation

Nirvana’—‘Paradise’—‘Racial

Dialectic

collectivism.

erudition!—a

“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone.