"But you see," said Roark quitly, "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 conemning 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."
"There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture post cards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton."
"He watched the pain's unsummoned appearance with a cold, detached curiosity; he said to himself: Well, here it is again. He waited to see how long it would last. It gave him a strange, hard pleasure to watch his fight against it, and he could forget that it was his own suffering; he could smile in contempt, not realizing that he smiled at his own agony."
"He went to the quarry and he worked that day as usual. She did not come to the quarry and he did not expect her to come. But the thought of her remained. He watched it with curiosity."
"Peter Keating had never felt the need to formulate abstract convictions. But he had a working substitute. 'A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom" - this had always been his credo, unstated and unquestioned. This spared him ay attempt to reach, reason or see"
" Kent Lansing smiled. 'Have you ever known a board to do anything?' 'What do you mean?' 'Just that: Have you ever known a board to do anything at all?' [...] ' All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men - and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings."
"No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea."
"It is not the doer who counts but those for whom things are done.
"Seeking god - and finding himself."
"You can never ruin an architect by proving that he's a bad architect. But you can ruin him because he'a an atheist, or because somebody sued him, or because he sept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off bottleflies."
"To say, 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'. "
The first campaign of the Banner was an appeal for money for a charitable cause. Displayed side by side, with an equal amount of space, the Banner ran two stories> one about a struggling young scientiest, starving in a garret, working on a great invention< the other about a chambermaid, the sweetheart of an executed murderer, awaiting the birth of her illegitimate child. One story was illustrated with scientific diagrams< the other - with the picture of a loose-mouthed girl wearing a tragic expression and disarranged clothes. The Banner asked its readers to help both these unfortunates. It received nine dollars and forty/five cents for the young scientist; it received one thousand and seventy-seven dollars for the unwed mother. Gail Wynand called a meeting for his staff. "Is there anyone here who doesn't understand?
But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage.
A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack.
This ship is not for going to places, but for going away from them.
Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brother - show me yours - show me that it i possible - show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
[...] What was the use and the meaning? "I" was the use and meaning. "I", Gail Wynand. That I lived and that I acted.
Why, no. I'm too conceited. If you want to call it that. I don't make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I'm a utter egotist.
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?" Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to five the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. What would happen to the work without those who do, think, work, produce?
"Men have been taught that the highest virtue is no to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution - or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary."
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