Quotes About Confidence

Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them. I feel that others live up to me, if they want me. And that is the way you feel, too, Hank, about yourself—whether you admit it or not.

Look," said Roark evenly, and pointed at the window. "Can you see the campus and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I don't give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture—or about anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers thought of it?

you've made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don't you know what you want?

why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself.

They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're hurrying because they are afraid. It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear.

If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.

Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the sudden realization that nothing else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done; she needed no proofs, no questions, no explanations; a complex problem could rest safely on three syllables pronounced by a man who knew what he was saying.

You're not even boasting about it." "Should I?" "You can't. You're too arrogant to boast.

Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?" "Good God, no!" "Only that kind of man spends his life running after women.

HOWARD ROARK LAUGHED. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him.

Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words.

didn't you enjoy meeting the young men?" "What men? There wasn't a man there I couldn't squash ten of.

She found that she liked the solitude; she awakened in the morning with a feeling of confident benevolence, the sense that she could venture forth and be willing to deal with whatever she found. In the city, she had lived in chronic tension to withstand the shock of anger, indignation, disgust, contempt. The only danger to threaten her here was the simple pain of some physical accident; it seemed innocent and easy by comparison.

IF YOU DON'T KNOW, THE THING TO DO IS NOT TO GET SCARED, BUT TO LEARN

Good God, Dagny! Do you expect me to be afraid of an object like James?

She had been proved right so eloquently, she had thought, that comments were unnecessary.

There was no boasting in his manner and consciousness, no thought of comparison. His attitude was not: "I can do it better than you," but simply: "I can do it.

She caught herself thinking: She's functioning well in an emergency, I'll be all right with her—and realized that she was thinking of herself.

Money inside a man's pocket has the power to turn into confidence inside his mind.

Why had she always felt that joyous sense of confidence when looking at machines?—she thought. In these giant shapes, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to "Why?" and "What for?"—like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel.

Thus, if a man is attracted to a woman of intelligence, confidence and strength, if he is attracted to a heroine, he reveals one kind of soul; if, instead, he is attracted to an irresponsible, helpless scatterbrain, whose weakness enables him to feel masculine, he reveals another kind of soul; if he is attracted to a frightened slut, whose lack of judgment and standards allows him to feel free of reproach, he reveals another kind of soul.

It was a satisfying bravery; it never aroused antagonism.

Have you always liked being Howard Roark?" Roark smiled. The smile was amused, astonished, involuntarily contemptuous.