The Fountainhead: Ayn Rand

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• The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature and struggle never to let him discover otherwise.
• Ellsworth Toohey -> What do you think about me; Roark: I don't. I don't even think about you
• Most of time I will be spending working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning 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.
• I don't propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me.
• You've made a mistake already. By asking me. Never ask people . Not  about your work. Don't you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
• Men gate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.
• freedom - to ask nothing, to expect nothing, to depend on nothing.
• Ellsworth toohey
• In order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls.
• when facing society, the man most concerned, the man who to do the most and contribute the most, has the least say.
• One loses everything when one loses sense of humor.
• The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line, it's a middleman. And more middlemen, the shorter.
• Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. That presupposes the ability to think. Thinking is something one doesn't borrow or pawn
•  Since freedom of speech is our sacred heritage and includes the freedom to waste one's time, there would have been no harm in such talk- beyond the fact that one could find so many endeavors more profitable than discussions of a man.
• You can fight a live issue. You cant fight dead one. Dead issues, like all dead things, don't just vanish, but leave some decomposing matter behind.
• You can never ruin an architect by proving that he's a bad architect. But you can ruin him because he is an athiest, or because somebody sued him or because he slept with some woman, or because he pulls wings off bottleflies.
• The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer.
• Ask them to achieve wealth, fame, love, brutality, murder, self-sacrifice. But don't ask them to achieve self-respect. 
• worst wars are religious war between sects of same religion or civil war between brothers of the same race.
• divide and conquer then unite and rule.
• To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder?
• Peter, 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.
• If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.
• Ellsworth Toohey
• you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. The soul, Peter, is that which can be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it - and the man  is yours. You won't need a whip - he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped.
• Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity.
• Kill man's sense of values. Kill his capacity to achieve it. Great man can't be ruled. We don't want any great man.
• Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into sneer. It's simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humor is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man's soul - and his soul won't be sacred to him.
• Don't allow men to be happy. Happiness is self-contained and self-sufficient. Happy men have no time and no use for you. Happy men are free men. So kill their joy in living. Take away from them whatever is dear or important to them. Never let them have what they want. Make them feel that the mere fact of a personal desire is evil. Bring them to a state where saying 'I want' is no longer a natural right, but a shameful admission. Altruism is great help in this. Unhappy man will come to you. They will need you. They will come for consolation, for support, for escape. Nature allows no vacuum. Empty man's soul - and space is yours to fill.
• Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn't they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven't they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Haven't uou been able to catch their theme sing - ' Give up, give up, give up, give up.' Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarates to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy - and you've damned it. That's how far we've come. We've got mankind by the throat. Throw your first-born into a sacrificial furnace- lie on a bed of nails - go in to the desert to mortify the flesh - don't dance- don't go to movies on sunday- don't drink. It's all the same line. The great line. Fools think taboos of this nature are just non sense. Something left over, old fashioned. But there's always a purpose in nonsense. Dont bother to examine folly- ask yourself only what it accomplishes.
• Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people they'll achieve superior kind of happiness by  giving up everything that makes them happy. You don't have to be clear about it. Use big words. UNIVERSAL HARMONY, ETERNAL SPIRIT, DIVINE PURPOSE, NIRVANA, PARADISE, RACIAL SUPREMACY, THE DICTATORSHIP OF PROLETARIAT. 
• It stands to reason that where there is sacrifice, there is someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there is service there is someone being served. the man who speaks to you of sacrifice , speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master.
• But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy , that's your natural right, that will be the man who's not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you. But let him come and you'll scream your empty heads off, howling that he's a selfish monster. So the racket is safe for many, many centuries. But here you might have noticed something. I said, 'it stands to reason'. Do you see? Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. 
• Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don't deny outright. Never deny anything outright, you give your hand away. Don't say reason is evil- though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say reason is limited. That there's something above it. What? you don't have to clear about it either. The field's inexhaustible. INSTINCT, FEELING, REVELATION, DIVINE INTUITION, DIALECTIC MATERIALISM. If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn't make sense- you are ready for him. You tell him that there is something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe. Suspend reason and you play it deuces wild. Anything goes in any manner you wish whenever you need it. You've got him. Can you rule a thinking man?  We don't want any thinking men.
• I’ll tell you. The world of the future. The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neighbor who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought—and so on, Peter, around the globe. Since all must agree with all. A world where no man will hold a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of his neighbor who’ll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who’ll have no desires—around the globe, Peter. Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster—prestige. The approval of his fellows—their good opinion—the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion. An octopus, all tentacles and no brain. Judgment, Peter? Not judgment, but public polls. An average drawn upon zeroes—since no individuality will be permitted. A world with its motor cut off and a single heart, pumped by hand. My hand—and the hands of a few, a very few other men like me. Those who know what makes you tick—you great, wonderful average, you who have not risen in fury when we called you the average, the little, the common, you who’ve liked and accepted those names. You’ll sit enthroned and enshrined, you, the little people, the absolute ruler to make all past rulers squirm with envy, the absolute, the unlimited, God and Prophet and King combined. Vox populi. The average, the common, the general. Do you know the proper antonym for Ego? Bromide, Peter. The rule of the bromide. But even the trite has to be originated by someone at some time. We’ll do the originating. Vox dei. We’ll enjoy unlimited submission—from men who’ve learned nothing except to submit. We’ll call it ‘to serve.’ We’ll give out medals for service. You’ll fall over one another in a scramble to see who can submit better and more. There will be no other distinction to seek. No other form of personal achievement. Can you see Howard Roark in the picture? No? Then don’t waste time on foolish questions. Everything that can’t be ruled, must go. And if freaks persist in being born occasionally, they will not survive beyond their twelfth year. When their brain begins to function, it will feel the pressure and it will explode. The pressure gauged to a vacuum. Do you know the fate of deep-sea creatures brought out to sunlight? So much for future Roarks. The rest of you will smile and obey. Have you noticed that the imbecile always smiles? Man’s first frown is the first touch of God on his forehead. The touch of thought. But we’ll have neither God nor thought. Only voting by smiles. Automatic levers—all saying yes ... Now if you were a little more intelligent—like your ex-wife, for instance—you’d ask: What of us, the rulers? What of me, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey? And I’d say, Yes, you’re right.
• Roark.
• Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.
• But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act—the process of reason—must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
• 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.
• “The creator lives for his work. He needs no other men. His primary goal is within himself. The parasite lives second-hand. He needs others. Others become his prime motive.
• “The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary.
• “The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism.
• “Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self.
• “No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind’s moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue.
• “The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality—the man who lives to serve others—is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit? The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man and he degrades the conception of love. But this is the essence of altruism.
• “Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not 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. Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
• “Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. But suffering is a disease. Should one come upon it, one tries to give relief and assistance. To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer—in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism. The creator is not concerned with disease, but with life. Yet the work of the creators has eliminated one form of disease after another, in man’s body and spirit, and brought more relief from suffering than any altruist could ever conceive.
• “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.
• “Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.
• “Here the basic reversal is most deadly. The issue has been perverted and man has been left no alternative—and no freedom. As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egotism and altruism. Egotism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. When it was added that man must find joy in self-immolation, the trap was closed. Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative. This was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind.
• “This was the device by which dependence and suffering were perpetuated as fundamentals of life.
• “The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of the reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man’s independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man’s dependence upon men is evil.
• “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. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.
• No work is ever done collectively, by a majority decision. Every creative job is achieved under the guidance of a single individual thought. An architect requires a great many men to erect his building. But he does not ask them to vote on his design. They work together by free agreement and each is free in his proper function. An architect uses steel, glass, concrete, produced by others. But the materials remain just so much steel, glass and concrete until he touches them. What he does with them is his individual product and his individual property. This is the only pattern for proper co-operation among men.
• “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 goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator.
• “A man thinks and works alone. A man cannot rob, exploit or rule—alone. Robbery, exploitation and ruling presuppose victims. They imply dependence. They are the province of the second-hander.
• “Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.
• “But men were taught to regard second-handers—tyrants, emperors, dictators—as exponents of egotism. By this fraud they were made to destroy the ego, themselves and others. The purpose of the fraud was to destroy the creators. Or to harness them. Which is a synonym.
• “From the beginning of history, the two antagonists have stood face to face: the creator and the second-hander. When the first creator invented the wheel, the first second-hander responded. He invented altruism.
• “The creator—denied, opposed, persecuted, exploited—went on, moved forward and carried all humanity along on his energy. The second-hander contributed nothing to the process except the impediments. The contest has another name: the individual against the collective.
• “The ‘common good’ of a collective—a race, a class, a state—was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men’s hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results.
• “The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is—Hands off!
• Howard Roark—The noble soul par excellence. The man as man should be. The self-sufficient, self-confident, the end of ends, the reason unto himself, the joy of living personified. Above all—the man who lives for himself, as living for oneself should be understood. And who triumphs completely. A man who is what he should be.
• He has the quiet, complete, irrevocable calm of an iron conviction. No dramatics, no hysteria, no sensitiveness about it—because there are no doubts. A quiet, almost indifferent acceptance of an irrevocable fact.
• A quick, sharp mind, courageous and not afraid to be hurt, has long since grasped and understood completely that the world is not what he is and just exactly what that world is. Consequently, he can no longer be hurt. The world has no painful surprise for him, since he has accepted long ago just what he is to expect from the world....
• He does not suffer, because he does not believe in suffering. Defeat or disappointment are merely a part of the battle. Nothing can really touch him. He is concerned only with what he does. Not how he feels. How he feels is entirely a matter of his own, which cannot be influenced by anything and anyone on the outside. His feeling is a steady, unruffled flame, deep and hidden, a profound joy of living and of knowing his power, a joy that is not even conscious of being joy, because it is so steady, natural and unchangeable....
• He will be himself at any cost—the only thing he really wants of life. And, deep inside of him, he knows that he has the ability to win the right to be himself. Consequently, his life is clear, simple, satisfying and joyous—even if very hard outwardly.
• He is in conflict with the world in every possible way-and at complete peace with himself. And his chief difference from the rest of the world is that he was born without the ability to consider others. As a matter of form and necessity on the way, as one meets fellow travellers—yes. As a matter of basic, primary consideration—no....
• Religion—None. Not a speck of it. Born without any “religious brain center.” Does not understand or even conceive of the instinct for bowing and submission. His whole capacity for reverence is centered on himself. Needs no mystical “consolation,” no other life. Thinks too much of this world to expect or desire any other....
• Peter Keating—The exact opposite of Howard Roark, and everything a man should not be. A perfect example of a selfless man who is a ruthless, unprincipled egotist—in the accepted meaning of the word. A tremendous vanity and greed, which lead him to sacrifice all for the sake of a “brilliant career” A mob man at heart, of the mob and for the mob. His triumph is his disaster. Left as an empty, bitter wreck, his “second-hand life” takes the form of sacrificing all for the sake of a victory which has no meaning and gives him no satisfaction. Because his means become his end. He shows that a selfless man cannot be ethical. He has no self and, therefore, cannot have any ethics. A man who never could be [man as he should be]. And doesn’t know it.
• Ellsworth Monkton Toohey—Noted economist, critic and liberal. “Noted” anything and everything. Great “humanitarian” and “man of integrity.” Glorifies all forms of collectivism because he knows that only under such forms will he, as the best representative of the mass, attain prominence and distinction, impossible to him on his own merits which do not exist. The idol-crusher par excellence. Born, organic enemy of all things heroic. Has a positive genius for the commonplace. Worst of all possible rats. A man who never could be—and knows it
• the non-creative “second-hand” man par excettence—the critic, expressing and molding the voice of public opinion, the average man at large—condensed, representing the average man’s qualities plus the peculiar qualities of his kind which make him the natural leader of average men. Theme song—a vicious, ingrown vanity coupled with an inane will to power, a lust for superiority that can be expressed only through others, whom, therefore, he has to dominate, a natural inferiority complex subconsciously leading to the bringing down of everything into inferiority...
• Went into “Intellectualism” in a big way. Two reasons: first, a subconscious revenge for his obvious physical inferiority, a means to a power his body could never give him; second, and main—a cunning perception that only mental control over others is true control, that if he can rule them mentaly he is indeed their total ruler. His vanity is not the passive one of Peter, who is really not concerned with other people as such, only as mirrors for his vanity; Toohey is very much concerned with other people in the sense of an overwhelming desire to dominate them....
• [Toohey] has realized ahead of many others the tremendous power of numbers, the power of the masses which, for the first time, in the XX century, are acquiring real significance in all, even in the intellectual, departments of life. In that sense, he is the man of the century, the genius of modern democracy in its worst meaning. The first cornerstone of his convictions is equality—his greatest passion. This includes the idea that, as two-legged human creatures, all possess certain intrinsic value by the mere fact of having been born in the shape of men, not apes. Any concrete, mental content inside the human shape does not matter. A great brain or a great talent or a magnificent character are of no importance as compared to that intrinsic value all possess as men—whatever that may be. He is never clear on what that may be and rather annoyed when the question is raised....
• Inasmuch as beliefs are important to him only as a means to an end, and that is the extent of his belief in beliefs, he is not bothered by his inconsistencies, by the vagueness and logical fallacy of his convictions. They are efficient and effective to secure the ends he is seeking. They work—and that is all they’re for....
• Communism, the Soviet variety particularly, is not merely an economic theory. It does not demand economic equality and security in order to set each individual free to rise as he chooses. Communism is, above all, a spiritual theory which denies the individual, not merely as an economic power, but in all and every respect. It demands spiritual subordination to the mass in every way conceivable, economic, intellectual, artistic; it allows individuals to rise on as servants of the masses, only as mouthpieces for the great average. It places, among single individuals, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey at the top of the human pyramid....
• In opposing the existing order of society, it is not the big capitalists and their money that Toohey opposes; he opposes the fading conceptions of individualism still existing in that society, and the privileged few as its material symbols. He says that he is fighting Rockefeller and Morgan; he is fighting Beethoven and Shakespeare....
• Toohey studies voraciously. He has a magnificent memory for facts and statistics, he is known as a “walking encyclopedia.” This is natural—since he has no creative mind, only a repeating, aping, absorbing “second-hand” one. By the same token—his absorption in studies: he has nothing new to create, but can acquire importance by absorbing the works and achievements of others. He is a sponge, not a fresh spring....
• He is a man so completely poisoned spiritually, that his puny physical appearance seems to be a walking testimonial to the spiritual pus filling his blood vessels.
• Micheal Angelo
• You should criticize by creating.