The Fountainhead (Twenty-ninth printing)

By: Ayn Rand, Read in 2010

vii “…religious abstractions are the product of man’s mind, not of supernatural revelation.”
ix “Religion’s monopoly in the field of ethics has made it extremely difficult to communicate the emotional meaning and connotations of a rational view of life.”
x “It is important here to remember that the only direct, introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.”
xi “”It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning, --it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—“ (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)”
xi “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.”
322 “…the first cosmic law—the basic equality of all men.”
518 “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.”
605 “What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live for others? Either pander to everybody’s wishes and be called corrupt; or impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybody’s good. Can you think of any other way?”



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