The Fountainhead

by Ayn Rand

man’s character is the product of his premises,

we are guilty of spiritual embezzlement.

“It’s a secret, Howard. A rare one. I’ll give it to you free of charge with my compliments: always be what people want you to be. Then you’ve got them where you want them. I’m giving it free because you’ll never make use of it. You’ll never know how. You’re brilliant in some respects, Howard, I’ve always said that—and terribly stupid in others.”

All growth demands destruction. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You must be willing to suffer, to be cruel, to be dishonest, to be unclean—anything, my dear, anything to kill the most stubborn of roots, the ego. And only when it is dead, when you care no longer, when you have lost your identity and forgotten the name of your soul—only then will you know the kind of happiness I spoke about, and the gates of spiritual grandeur will fall open before you.”

She knew that his thoughts, in this moment, were clear and immediate like visual perception, that the act of thinking was an act of seeing a procession of years behind him.

You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too.

We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of his life. If he doesn’t build, when he has the means, it’s because his life has not been what he wanted.”

One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.”

When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness.

Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy.