Quotes About Individualism

People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring after him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct his presence awakened in most people.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another—their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

For the word 'We' must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.

We were guilty of the great transgression of preference!

Roark threw his head up once, for a flash of a second, to look at Heller across the table. It was all the introduction they needed; it was like a handshake.

There is no way to make a human being accept the role of a sacrificial animal except by destroying his self-esteem. There is no way to destroy his self-esteem except by making him reject his own consciousness. There is no way to make him reject his own consciousness except by convincing him of its impotence.

Bajo la piel todos somos hermanos, y estaría dispuesto a despellejar a la humanidad para demostrarlo

Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.

The story is the story of Howard Roark's triumph. It has to show what the man is, what he wants and how he gets it. It has to be a triumphant epic of man's spirit, a hymn glorifying a man's "I." It has to show every conceivable hardship and obstacle on his way—and how he triumphs over them, why he has to triumph.

Other people are human. They're sensitive. They can't devote their whole life to metals and engines. You're lucky- you've never had any feelings. You've never felt anything at all.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I--I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.

I really believe that a building is a unit, not a city, so that city planning should not control all buildings. Because a house can be the product of one man, but a city cannot. And nothing collective can have the unity and integrity of a "unit.")

In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.' "A

I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom, Alvah, freedom." "You call that freedom?" "To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing." "What if you found something you wanted?" "I won't find it. I won't choose to see it. It would be part of that lovely world of yours. I'd have to share it with all the rest of you—and I wouldn

I am done with this creed of corruption.

if the majority of men cannot know what is good for them, each for himself, how can they know what is good for others by proxy? If they are to be controlled by specialists, how and by what standard can they choose the specialist?

This god, this one word: I.

You're the most immoral man living—you think of nothing but justice! You don't feel any love at all!

In the normal conditions of existence, man has to choose his goals, project them in time, pursue them and achieve them by his own effort. He cannot do it if his goals are at the mercy of and must be sacrificed to any misfortune happening to others. He cannot live his life by the guidance of rules applicable only to conditions under which human survival is impossible.

But, after all, I did break one of your laws." "Well, what do you think they're for?

Durante siglos, la batalla moral fue librada entre quienes sostenían que sus vidas le pertenecen a Dios y quienes sostenían que les pertenecen a sus vecinos; entre aquellos que predicaban que el bien es el autosacrificio en beneficio de fantasmas en el paraíso, y aquellos que predicaban que el bien es el autosacrificio en provecho de los incompetentes de la Tierra. Y nadie te ha dicho que tu vida te pertenece y que el bien reside en vivirla plenamente.

What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree, and to obey?

By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.

depravity." She