Fountainhead Ayn Quotes & Sayings

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

Roark looked at him and understood. Roark inclined his head in agreement; he could acknowledge what Cameron had just declared to him only by a quiet glance as solemn as Cameron's. — Ayn Rand

He thought ... that man's work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them. — Ayn Rand

The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man - and he asks no other man to exist for him. — Ayn Rand

...Opinion without a rational process. — Ayn Rand

It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence. — Ayn Rand

Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers-show me yours-show me that it is possible-show me your achievement-and the knowledge will give me the courage for mine. Mallory (the young artist) to Roark in "The Fountainhead" — Ayn Rand

The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity - on all - the mark of suffering. — Ayn Rand

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature - and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning - and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls. AYN RAND New York, May 1968 — Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, doubtless two of the most exquisitely adolescent of fictions. — Nancy Mairs

Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing. — Ayn Rand

For three years, ever since he had lived in Stanton, he had come here for his only relaxation, to swim, to rest, to think, to be alone and alive, whenever he could find one hour to spare, which had not been often. In his new freedom the first thing he had wanted to do was to come here, because he knew that he was coming for the last time. — Ayn Rand

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

She found a dark satisfaction in pain - because that pain came from him. — Ayn Rand

The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer. — Ayn Rand

Is it an inspiring sight to see a man commit a heroic gesture, and then learn that he goes to vaudeville shows for relaxation? Or see a man who's painted a magnificent canvas - and learn that he spends his time sleeping with every slut he meets?"
"What do you want? Perfection?"
" - or nothing. So, you see, I take the nothing. — Ayn Rand

You know that I hate you, Roark. I hate you for what you are, for wanting you, for having to want you. I'm going to fight you-and I'm going to destroy you-and I tell you this as calmly as I told you that I'm a begging animal. I'm going to pray that you can't be destroyed-I tell you this, too-even though I believe in nothing and have nothing to pray to. But I will fight to block every step you take. I will fight to tear every chance you want away from you. I will hurt you through the only thing that can hurt you-through your work. I will fight to starve you, to strangle you on the things you won't be able to reach. I have done it to you to today-and that is why I shall sleep with you tonight. Part 2, Chapter 7, pg. 272-3 The Fountainhead — Ayn Rand

When one makes enemies one knows that one's dangerous where it's necessary to be dangerous. — Ayn Rand

A man's spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego. — Ayn Rand

Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost. — Ayn Rand

Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely. — Ayn Rand

Keating felt naked ... People were his protection against people. Roark had no sense of people. Others gave Keating a feeling of his own value. Roark gave him nothing. — Ayn Rand

He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. — Ayn Rand

You knew better than that. And it's such an old one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well-known that I didn't think anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again. — Ayn Rand

She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste. — Ayn Rand

I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands ... - I want you like an animal ... or a whore. — Ayn Rand

Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that? — Ayn Rand

She walked down the hill and she found relief in the unnatural stillness of the earth around her, the stillness of full light without sun, of leaves without motion, of a luminous, waiting silence. — Ayn Rand

He spent several days deciding on the artifacts. Much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself, and approximately the same time required to get that many reds. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way he would indict the system and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. Actually, he was not as sure in his mind what the death achieved as what the two artifacts achieved; but anyhow it all added up ... — Philip K. Dick

To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a man simply because he is strong and great? — Ayn Rand

And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. — Ayn Rand

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. — Ayn Rand

If I ever want to punish myself for something terrible, if I ever want to punish myself disgustingly - I'll marry you." She added: "Consider it a promise. — Ayn Rand

And she thought, with a vicious thrill, of what these people would do if they read her mind in this moment; if they knew that she was thinking of a man in a quarry, thinking of his body with a sharp intimacy as one does not think of another's body but only of one's own. She smiled; the cold purity of her face prevented them from seeing the nature of that smile. — Ayn Rand

I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society. — Ayn Rand

What kind of a tragedy did you have in your childhood?"
"Why, none at all. I had a wonderful childhood. Free and peaceful and not bothered too much by anybody. Well, yes, I did feel bored very often. But I'm used to that. — Ayn Rand

Let's stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thought? — Ayn Rand

In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to anyone ... Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they both desire the exchange. If they do not desire it, they are not forced to deal with each other. They seek further. This is the only possible form of relationship between equals. Anything else is a relation of slave to master, or victim to executioner. — Ayn Rand

Katie, why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? 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. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things
they're not even desires
they're things people do to escape from desires
because it's such a big responsibility, really to want something. — Ayn Rand

He seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his elegance had an odd quality here - it did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters. — Ayn Rand

The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living. — Ayn Rand

What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word - 'Yes.' The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. — Ayn Rand

I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. — Ayn Rand

You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act ... — Ayn Rand

The exquisite kindliness of her manner suggested that their relationship was of no possible consequence, that she could not pay him the tribute of hostility. — Ayn Rand

He was accustomed to hostility; this kind of benevolence was more offensive than hostility. He shrugged; he thought that he would be out of here soon and back in the simple, clean reality of his own office. — Ayn Rand

I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. — Clarence Thomas

She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory. — Ayn Rand

Dominique, it's abnormal to feel so strongly about anything." "That's the only way I can feel. Or not at all. — Ayn Rand

The unrecognized genius - that's an old story. Have you ever thought of a much worse one - the genius recognized too well? ... That a great many men are poor fools who can't see the best - that's nothing. One can't get angry at that. But do you understand about the men who see it and don't want it? — Ayn Rand

She sat looking at him as she always did; her glance had tenderness without scorn and sadness without pity. — Ayn Rand

He raised his head and looked at her; she had not caught him noticing her approach; he looked up as if he expected her to be there, as if he knew she would be back. She saw the hint of a smile, more insulting than words. He sustained the insolence of looking straight at her, he would not move, he would not grant the concession of turning away - of acknowledging that he had no right to look at her in such manner. He had not merely taken that right, he was saying silently that she had given it to him. — Ayn Rand

She wondered why her normal desire to say little, to hold things closed, broke down before him, why she felt compelled to simple frankness, such as she could offer no one else. — Ayn Rand

Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once ... There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them - because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man. — Ayn Rand

She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference - as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt. — Ayn Rand

It was strange to be conscious of another person's existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever, of what she thought. — Ayn Rand

He stood looking up at her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone dust on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs, the lines of his long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she was wondering what he would look like naked. She saw him looking at her as if he knew that. — Ayn Rand

She had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found. — Ayn Rand

And, after all, you've got to live."
"Not that way," said Roark. — Ayn Rand

Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her. The first-order information is the intensity: what matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is "overrated," with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute "underrated" for the opposite effect). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Before Ayn Rand coined the term "objectivists", we just called them "selfish assholes". — James Rozoff

I have yet to see a genius or a hero who, if stuck with a burning match, would feel less pain than his undistinguished average brother. — Ayn Rand

I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't 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 be torn to pieces if necessary. — Ayn Rand

I like to receive money for my work. But I can pass that up this time. I like to have people know my work is done by me. But I can pass that up. I like to have tenants made happy by my work. But that doesn't matter too much. The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way. Peter, there's nothing in the world that you can offer me, except this. Offer me this and you can have anything I've got to give. My work done my way. A private, personal, selfish, egotistical motivation. That's the only way I function. That's all I am. — Ayn Rand

There had always been a God and a Devil - only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil - he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small. — Ayn Rand

Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd - and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him. — Ayn Rand

For people who enjoyed their own presence well enough and sought only a place where they would be left free to enjoy it. — Ayn Rand

Every stylish man should have a copy of 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand on his bookshelf. — Orlando Bloom

She saw the man below looking at her, she saw the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to look at her now. She turned her head away. — Ayn Rand

They talked about nothing in particular, sentences that had meaning only in the sound of the voices, in warm gaiety, in the ease of complete relaxation. — Ayn Rand

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. — Ayn Rand

Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it. — Ayn Rand

She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance. — Ayn Rand

His face was like a law of nature - a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint. — Ayn Rand

How did you know what's been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don't want to hate ... Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you
except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean, you want to hear? You want to know what I do and why I do it, you want to know what I think? It's not boring to you? It's important? — Ayn Rand

"You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead" — Ayn Rand

There were two books I remember changing my life as a introverted, bookish 14 year old. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. One was set in a fantastic world, populated by outlandish characters,tired prose, foul monsters, evil incarnate and a message about losing one's humanity. The other book was about hobbits. — Christopher Odell Homsley

Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. — Ayn Rand

What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. — Ayn Rand

He sat looking at her. She waited to see the derisive smile, but it did not come. The smile seemed implicit in the room itself, in her standing there, halfway across that room. — Ayn Rand

I don't think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you. — Ayn Rand

I don't like people who try to say only what they think I think. — Ayn Rand

They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. — Ayn Rand

She saw the faces streaming past her, the faces made alike by fear - fear as a common denominator, fear of themselves, fear of all and of one another, fear making them ready to pounce upon whatever was held sacred by any single one they met ... She had kept herself clean and free in a single passion - to touch nothing. She had liked facing them in the streets, she had liked the impotence of their hatred, because she offered them nothing to be hurt. — Ayn Rand

His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter. — Ayn Rand

I want it to be a palace - only I don't think palaces are very luxurious. They're so big, so promiscuously public. A small house is the true luxury. A residence for two people only - for my wife and me. It won't be necessary to allow for a family, we don't intend to have children. Nor for visitors, we don't intend to entertain. — Ayn Rand

His life was crowded , public and impersonal as a city square. The friend of humanity had no single private friend. People came to him; he came close to no one. He accepted all. His affection was golden, smooth and even, like a great expanse of sand; there was no wind of discrimination to raise dunes; the sands lay still and the sun stood high.
Toohey. — Ayn Rand

She seemed to find him suitable as an inconsequential companion for an occasional, inconsequential evening. He thought that she liked him. — Ayn Rand

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 his life. If he doesn't build, when he has the means, it's because his life has not been what he wanted. — Ayn Rand

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. — Ayn Rand

He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that. — Ayn Rand

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's not after your soul. — Ayn Rand

She thought that relaxation was attractive only in those for whom it was an unnatural state; then even limpness acquired purpose. — Ayn Rand

The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio. — Ayn Rand

That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures - because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer - because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage. — Ayn Rand

It was not a silence of resentment; it was the silence of an understanding too delicate to limit by words. — Ayn Rand

I'll listen if you want me to ... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don't mind that, I don't mind listening. — Ayn Rand

He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face - a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another's humiliation. — Ayn Rand

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

A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress. — Ayn Rand