Wes Du > Wes's Quotes

“To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“She knew that even pain can be confessed, but to confess happiness is to stand naked, delivered to the witness...”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?”
“Yes.”
“My dear fellow, who will let you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artists metaphysical value judgments.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched".”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too ... Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor's pocket? No, it's not as easy as that. If that were all, I'd say ninety-five percent of humanity were honest, upright men. Only, as you can see, they aren't. Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man's first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead