I've finished Atlas Shrugged. I really wish I had written down the date that I started it so that I'd know exactly how long it took. I'm thinking at least six months. In honor of that, I'd like to share some of my favorite quotes from the book.
"He always came to her unexpectedly--and she liked it, because it made him a continuous presence in her life, like the ray of a hidden light that could hit her at any moment."
"The owner placed a mug of coffee before her. She closed both hands around it, finding enjoyment in its warmth. She glanced around her and thought, in habitual professional calculation, how wonderful it was that one could buy so much for a dime...She drank the coffee, concerned with nothing but the pleasure of feeling as if the hot liquid were reviving the arteries of her body." (Although I've never tried to put into words the way I feel about coffee, this pretty much hits the nail on the head. If only it were still a dime...)
"Any refusal to recognize reality, for any reason whatsoever, has disastrous consequences." - Fransisco d'Anconia
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted--and you create a nation of law-breakers--and then you can cash in on guilt." - Dr. Ferris
"A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an objective principle of justice recognized by his judges, a principle upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are no principles, that I have no rights and that you may do with me whatever you please. Very well. Do it." - Hank Rearden
"That special pleasure she had felt in watching him eat the food she had prepared...it had been the pleasure of knowing that she had pleased him with a sensual enjoyment, that one form of his body's satisfaction had come from her." (Sorry, that one may have been a little racy.)
"...it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence." - John Galt (This has got to be one of my favorite quotes of all time and probably is the reason I wanted to read this book in the first place. I found it on a random quote website or something and loved it so much that, not knowing where it came from, I actually Googled "Who is John Galt?" If you know anything about this book at all, you'll know why that's funny.)
"...honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others." - John Galt
"Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions." - John Galt (Maybe that one's a little extreme. Regardless, I wrote it down when I read it, which means it stuck out of the text for some reason and made me think a little more.)
"If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly...But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim--is to accept the mortgagte of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help his is to sanction his evil and to support his career of distruction. Be it only a penny you will not miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it." - John Galt (There were many moments in this book, and especially in this particularly long speech made by this character, that I found to be harsh considering how strongly Ayn Rand feels about religion being ridiculous, or so how it seems to be that way. The beginning of this quote was kind of a saving grace for this book, since once I got to this point I was feeling pretty angry about how inconsiderately John Galt was speaking. It is pretty clear that Ayn Rand has very little compassion and grace, but I did still enjoy reading this book.)
I started a new book today called Matched by Ally Condie. I read the first two chapters at lunch. It seems very fantastical, but after reading Atlas Shrugged, I kind of feel like I'm reading a book written for middle-schoolers. Hopefully it grows on me.
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