The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand..

Gary Cooper as Howard Roark delivers the memorable courtroom speech in self-defense for dynamiting Courtlandt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc7oZ9yWqO4

Ayn Rand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUwTHn-9hhU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJBBt0nfDN4&feature=related

I picked few lines that caught my attention in the book:

1. Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.

2. Man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

3. I did not feel discouragement very often, and when I did, it did not last longer than overnight.

4. One cannot give up the world to those one despises.

5. Neither politics nor ethics nor philosophy is an end in itself, neither in life nor in literature. Only Man is an end in himself.

6. The noble soul has reverence for itself.

7. "..Who will let you?" .. "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?".

8. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal.

9. ".. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one."

10. "..I don't intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don't intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to have clients in order to build.."

11. ".. I don't propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me."

12. Three eternal entities: Truth, Love, and Beauty!

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

14. "..Take this up to the boss for the okay. Try to listen to what he will say and try to look intelligent. Neither of which matters anyway."

15. ..One must always be original...

16. ..the real work of an office is done beyond its walls..

17. ..It's not what you do that matters really. It's only you..

18. ..He did not know why her presence made him confess things unconfessed in his own mind..

19. ...I'm the kind that uses people...

20. ..Better now than later...

21...I can only teach you to do it better...

22. ..He did not care so long as his clients were impressed, the clients did not care so long as their guests were impressed, and the guests did not care anyway.

23. ..I'm not criticizing anything, I'm not passing judgment. There are some things that I can not do. Let it go at that..

24. ..the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible...

25. ..Every piece of it is there because it needs it and for no other reason.. : Design!

26. ..Everything has strings leading to everything else.. We are all so tied together..

27. ..There is some good in the worst of us. There's always a redeeming feature..

28. .. I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. -- Freedom!..

29. .. One does not get to be first in anything without the strength to make some sacrifices..

30. ...It takes strength to deny yourself in order to win other people's respect...

31. ..No great man ever got there alone. Don't you shrug it off, how much the right woman's helped the best of them...

32. ..I do not like people who have to be handled...

33. ..for a business, let them giggle, but let them talk about it...

34. ..Young people think that you forget what happens on the way when you get there...But you do not..

35. ..the beauty of the human body is that it has not a single muscle which does not serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man..

36. .. It's the way most people feel.. They have to take chance, everything they do is taking a chance, but they feel so much safer when they take it on something they know to be ugly, vain and stupid...

37. ..You can not force it down their throats.. You do not have to. You must only be patient. Because on your side you have reason and against you, you have just a vague, fat, blind inertia...

38. ..I know a man who knows when I see him..

39. ..It was a war in which he was invited to fight nothing, yet he was pushed forward to fight, he had to fight, he had no choice - and no adversary.

40. ..People do not trust novelty..

41. ..the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity..

42. ..We are the guardians of a great human function. Perhaps of the greatest function among the endeavors of man. We have achieved much and we have erred often. But we are willing in all humility to make way for our heirs. We are only men and we are only seekers. But we seek for truth with the best there is in our hearts. We seek with what there is of the sublime granted to the race of men. It is a great quest...

43. A continuous struggle against the compulsion of a single desire was compulsion also.

44. Pressure is a powerful factor. It leads to consequences which once started cannot be controlled.

45. Greatness is an exaggeration, and like all exaggerations of dimension it connotes at once the necessary corollary of emptiness.

46. Nothing of importance had ever happened on earth.

47. When one makes enemies one knows that one's dangerous where it's necessary to be dangerous. There are things that must be destroyed - or they will destroy us.

48. Nothing's really sacred but a sense of humor.

49. 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.

50. One did not stress total ignorance of a subject if one were in total ignorance of it.

51.One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes.

52. Not by what we are shall we be judged, but by those we serve.

53. I'll never give you up.

54. ..Before each venture he studied the field for a long time, then proceed to act as if he had never heard of it, upsetting all precedent...

55. ..I go only by what I like. But I do know what I like...

56. .. I feel completely natural only when I'm working..

57. .. all useless things have charm...

58. .. Argument is one of the things that has neither use nor charm. Leave it to the men of brains. Brains, of course, are a dangerous confession of weakness. It has been said that men develop brains when they have failed in everything else...

59. ..to display one's brain is so vulgar. It's even more vulgar than to display one's wealth...

60. ..you will never be more than a dilettante of the intellect, unless you submerge yourself in some cause greater than yourself..

61. You can achieve success in one of two ways: by not looking at people at all or by looking at everything about them.

62. ..Always be what people want you to be. Then you have got them where you want them..

63. .. There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we are not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.

64. ..Every human soul has a style of its own. Its one basic theme. You will see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won't show it to you. His face will. You would have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of this face. You need nothing else..

65. ..There's nothing important on earth, except human beings. There's nothing as important about human beings as their relations to one another..

66. ... the noblest conception on earth is that of men's absolute equality..

67. ..And are those people worth annoying ?...

68. ..one can make one's point best by contrast, by comparison...

69. ..No man likes to be beaten...

70. ..I will hurt you through the only thing that can hurt you ..

71. ..since we both understand and there are not any questions to be asked between us..

72. ...Every loneliness is a pinnacle..

73. ...What is kinder - to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance - or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice...

74... Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected...

75. ..All things are simple when you reduce them to fundamentals. You would be surprised if you knew how few fundamentals there are. Only two, perhaps. To explain all of us. It's the untangling, the reducing that's difficult - that's why people don't like to bother. I don't think they would like results, either...

76. ...Allies never trust each other, but that does not spoil their effectiveness. Our motives might be quite opposite. In fact, they are. But it does not matter. The results will be the same. It is not necessary to have a noble aim in common. It is necessary only to have a common enemy..

77...The great things on earth are things of tension..

78. ..'nothing' is superior to 'something'...

79... We must be kind to everybody around us. We must accept and forgive - there is so much to be forgiven in each one of us. If you learn to love everything, the humblest, the least, the meanest, then the meanest in you will be loved. Then we will find the sense of universal equality, the great peace of brotherhood, a new world...

80. .. He was afraid of nothing ..

81. ..nature allows no vacuum..

82. ..What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? .. Then in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?... :)

83. .. no gift is worth a damn, unless it's the most precious thing you have got... Give your soul...

84. ..be empty in order to be filled. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal..

85. Two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act.

86. A hysterical devotion to one's career does not make for happiness or success. It is wiser to select a profession about which you can be calm, sane and matter-of-fact..

87. ..it's not what you can get out of society, it's what you can give..

88. .. I play the stock market of the spirit. And I sell short..

89. ..everything that proceeds from the ego is evil; everything that proceeds from love for others is good..

90...It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea..

91. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line - it's a middleman..

92. ..Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think...

93. ..You are good, but you are not good enough for that..

94. ..It is not the doer that counts but those for whom things are done..

95. I did not come for your sake. I came for mine.

96. I will never be afraid again..

97. Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with most people is that you do not have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy. Make it become your ally!

98. A temple is a place where man is to experience exaltation. He thought that exaltation comes from the consciousness of being guiltless, of seeing the truth and achieving it, of living up to one's highest possibility, of knowing no shame and having no cause for shame, of being able to stand naked in full sunlight. He thought that exaltation means joy and that joy is man's birthright.

99. Ask anything of men. Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But do not ask them to achieve self-respect. They will hate your soul.

100. It's the masters who despise the slaves, and the slaves who hate the masters..

101.You must stop wanting anything. Men are important only in relation to other men, in their usefulness, in the service they render. Unless you understand that completely, you can expect nothing but one form of misery or another.

102. ..All growth demands destruction...

103. .. the most beautiful words were those which were not needed..

104. ..We never need to say anything to each other when we are together. I love you! As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I have given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me.

105. .. If a group of people felt that some person was acquiring power over them, that was the time to fight such a person..

106. ..I'm simply buying the most valuable thing that can be bought - your time...

107. ..Most people say they are concerned with the suffering of others. I'm not ...

108. ..There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind...

109. .. He had a way of getting admitted into places against all rules...

110. ..Men differ in their virtues, if any, but they are alike in their vices...

111. ..If you make people perform a noble duty, it bores them. If you make them indulge themselves, it shames them. But combine the two - and you have got them..

112. ..Honesty is the best policy, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe...

113. ..When there's no news, make it..

114. ..He kept the details of his life secret by making it glaringly public as a whole..

115. ...Every man on earth has a soul of his own that nobody can stare at..

116. ..As long as he still feared something, he had a foothold on living; even if it meant only moving forward to an unknown disaster. The thought of death gave him nothing. The thought of living gave him a slender alms - the hint of fear..

117. ..you have to flatter people whom you despise in order to impress other people who despise you..

118. ..there are two things one can not give up: One's thoughts ad one's desires..

119...People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they are reflecting too..

120. ..It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that can not be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it..

121. ..A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack..

122. ..the person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him..

123. .. One can not love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It's one or the other. One does not love God and sacrilege impartially. Except when one does not know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one does not know God...

124. .. Once you have felt what it means to love as you and I know it - the total passion for the total height - you are incapable of anything less..

125. ..You will be free to leave me whenever you wish...

126. ..You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they are not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict - and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreserved or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment?...

127...Of course it's true. If you have the courage to accept it...

128. ..It does not matter. You are only human. That's all you want to be...

129. . Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable...

130...constant change is a necessity of life...

131. ..You would not have wanted to make me suffer if you were completely indifferent to me...

132. ..but only that man was the life force and woman could respond to nothing else; that this man had the will of life, the prime power, and this act was only its simplest statement, and she was responding not to the act nor to the man, but to that force within him..

133. .. Patience is always rewarded and romance is just around the corner...

134. ..It's no use asking for explanations, either you are fine enough to like it or you are not...

135. ..relaxation was attractive only in those for whom it was an unnatural state...

136...Integrity - the impossible, the clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art...

137....man's work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a degradation..

138.. ..he had given someone the courage to face a lifetime...

139. ..Would you have missed this, no matter what price they make you pay for it afterward? ...

140. ..It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man - almost rarer - who is great enough to see greatness and say so..

141. ..Most people build as they live - as a matter of routine and senseless accident. But a few understand that building is a great symbol. We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form. For the man who understands this, a house he owns is a statement of life. If he does not build, when he has means, it's because his life has not been what he wanted..

142. ..I Do..

143. ..for the first time in his life he had spoken to a man without feeling the reluctance, the sense of pressure, the need of disguise he had always experienced when he spoke to people; there had been no strain and no need of strain; as if he had spoken to himself...

144. ..one does the best one can...

145. ..stop torturing yourself...

146.. I think it hurts you to know that you have made me suffer. You wish you had not. And yet there's something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I have not suffered at all..

147...I am through with it. You are not...

148...I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it did not make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself to torn to pieces if necessary...

149. ..the ability to say 'Yes' or 'No' is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function - the act of valuing. 'Yes' or 'No'. 'I wish' or 'I do not wish'. You can not say 'Yes' without saying 'I'. There's no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours..

150. ..I have always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place ...

151. .. Do not look for the reason..

152....have you ever held power over a single human being? No. And I would not take it if it were offered to me...


153. ...I was the use and meaning, I, . That I lived and that I acted...

154. ..I was thinking of people who say that happiness is impossible on earth. Look how hard they all try to find some joy in life. Look how they struggle for it. Why should any living creature exist in pain? By what conceivable right can anyone demand that a human being exist for anything but his own joy? Every one of them wants it. Every part of him wants it. But they never find it. I wonder why. They whine and say they do not understand the meaning of life. There's a particular kind of people that I despise. Those who seek some sort of a higher purpose or 'universal goal', who do not know what to live for, who moan that they must 'find themselves'. You hear it all around us. That seems to be the official bromide of our century. Every book you open. Every drooling self-confession. It seems to be the noble thing to confess. I would think it would be the most shameful one...

155. Life: I can make what I want of it, and that's the meaning of life...

156. ..violence is not hard to bear, only patience is..

157. ..the glance said simply that nothing had changed and nothing was needed to state it...

158. ..To solve the gigantic problems crushing the world today, we must clarify our mental confusion. Freedom and compulsion are one. Whenever a new compulsion is imposed on us, we automatically gain a new freedom. The two are inseparable. Only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom...

159. ..what makes people unhappy is not too little choice, but too much..

160. ..I can get away with anything..

161. ..Have a little patience, there's a proper time for everything..

162. ..Nobody understands what a terrible handicap it is to be born rich. Because people just take for granted that because you were born that way you would be no good if you were not..

163.. ..We all take one too many once in a while..

164. ..It's easier to pull down but build up...

165. ..Change is the basic principle of the universe. Everything changes. Seasons, leaves, flowers, birds, morals, men and buildings...

166. ...we are all equal and interchangeable... ?

167. ..when you deal in principles, it saves you the trouble of individual encounters...

168. ..the inexplicable is always terrifying. One loses everything when one loses one's sense of humor...

169. ..He had understood what he could not do..

170. ..I do not think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him...

171. ..People do not forgive a man who is slipping..

172. ..To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world...

173. ..before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity...

174...If it has to be built, it might as well be built right..

175. I love this work. I want to make it real, living, functioning, built. But every living thing is integrated. Do you know what that means? Whole, pure, complete, unbroken. Do you know what constitutes an integrating principle? A THOUGHT. The one thought, the single thought that created the thing and every part of it. The thought which no one can change or touch...

176. ..the only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way..That's the only way I function. That's all I am..

177. ..If your courage fails you at any point, remember that you will lose everything by giving in...

178. ..I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself..

179. ..I do not make comparisons. I never think of myself in relation to anyone else. I just refuse to measure myself as part of anything. I am an utter egotist..

180. ..the confidence of surrender - he relaxes like a cat - and cats do not relax except with people they like..

181. ..If I do not want to understand what you are talking about, I won't understand it, no matter what you say..

182.. It's the hardest thing in the world - to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want...

183. ..it's agreeable to look back occasionally. But one's perspective widens. One grows richer spiritually with the years..

184. ..their serenity was their best means of communication...

185. ..I do not wish to be symbol of anything. I am only myself..

186. ..They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand..

187. ..A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He does not need it...

188. ..It's simple to seek substitutes for competence - such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence..

189. ..Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing..

190. ..I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I have always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I have always recognized it at once - and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self sufficient ego. Nothing else matters..

191. ..If one does not respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others..

192. ..I would give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I could not and would not live for you...

193. ..the worst second-hander of all - the man who goes after power...

194. ..there are matters in which one must not ask for help not give it...

195. ..the most important never has to be said between us...

196. ..it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all..

197. ..resistance fed him and made him stronger...

198. ..Socrates, Galileo, the thinkers - each a man who stood alone, the man who defied men..

199. ..the right moment always comes..

200. ..If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind..

201. ..Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men are free men...

202. ..if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who is not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you..

203. .. the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words...

204. ..sound never dies, but travels on in space...

205. ..a man totally innocent of fear...

206. ..Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision..

206. ..Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced...

207. ..His truth was his only motive. His own truth, and his own work to achieve it in his own way..

208. ..His vision, his strength, his courage came from his own spirit. A man's spirit, however, is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are the functions of the ego...

209...Man cannot survive except through his mind..

210. Nothing is given to man on earth. Everything he needs has to be produced. And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways - by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary. The creator's concern is the conquest of nature. The parasite's concern is the conquest of men.

211. ..The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion..

212. ..All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil..

213. .No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought..

214. The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime good within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.

215. ..I am a man who does not exist for others..

216. ..Mankind will never destroy itself, nor should it think of itself as destroyed..