Favorite quotes from The Fountainhead.



What I admire most in Ayn Rand's style of writing is her 'catechismal' depiction of characters. She is particularly impressive in disseminating her ideas while simultaneously portraying her characters.

"........ Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?"

Howard Roark, Part 1, Chapter 1, pg. 33

( you can see the same vigor in these lines....
"The most depraved type of human beings....(is) the man without a purpose."
'Atlas Shrugged' 1957
)



"....One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It is one or the other...."

Mr. Wynand, Part 3, Chapter 4, pg. 444



"It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against things that made the play possible-two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement-two forces that had fought since the world began-and every religion had known of them-and there had always been a God and a Devil-only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil-he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small."

Part 3, Chapter 8, pg. 492



"Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living."

Ellsworth Toohey, Part 4, Chapter 14, pg. 636



"Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independece. "

Part 4, Chapter 18, pg. 681


"Civilization is the process of setting man free from man."

Howard Roark.