Hannah H.’s Reviews > The Fountainhead > Status Update

“Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.”

“And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways—by independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.”

“You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.”

“Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice—run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”

“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?’ […] Their reality is not within them […] Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people.

“He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that’s 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.”

“He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed him evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.”

“He thought, it’s not intentional, not just to hurt me, he can’t help it, he doesn’t even know it—but it’s in his whole body, that look of a creature glad to be alive. And he realized he had never actually believed that any living thing could be glad of the gift of existence.”

“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?”

“‘There’s so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions,’ said Wynand. ‘I’ve always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them.’”