REACTION: ★★★★ (Loved)
I find Ayn Rand, as an author, endearing in her utter sense of rectitude about her strongly irreverent and entirely rational views. She objectifies people to personify her objectivism. Her characters and stories are more philosophical concepts than they are reflective of human experience, but such is the charm of her works. And you get the sense that she sees people as either belonging to her or dead to her, nothing in between. I agree with most everything she points out about humanity and society within this book, except I don't regard those who disagree or live/believe differently as evil or weak the way she does. No one is really qualified to judge how other people live their lives, and no single course works for everyone. But I do think she voices some very important and poignant truths about individualism vs. collectivism and self-sufficiency vs. altruism that needs to be voiced. No one ever speaks out against the dangers of imposed altruism and community, but to enforce that as an institution is just as oppressive to the human spirit as any sort of dictatorship/totalitarianism. So I'm glad she stated her case as viciously as she did, because otherwise it would never come across clearly enough. Freedom of choice, equal opportunity, self-respect, and independent thought are championed throughout this book, so I can imagine this being a hit with college students. Though I can see feminists being outraged by the incident of desired rape that happens between Dominique and Roark, but if understood correctly it does not justify nor condone the act of rape. These two characters are very much set apart as oddities and representative of no one else except themselves with their very specific attitudes and preferences in that specific situation which actually didn't victimize anyone. The writing and storytelling itself has such defined efficiency, every word used has exact purpose and intention, nothing goes to waste. Basically, the opposite of Charles Dickens, though just as lengthy. My favorite parts of the story involve Dominque, Roark, and Wynand, respectively. Both their individual characters alone and the shared understanding and kinship each recognizes in the other. They all see through the nonsense and posers that run the world and rebel against vacuous society in their own unique ways: Dominque by experimenting with and embodying contradictions, Wynand by destroying ideals and ruling the corruption, Roark by shunning publicity and staying true to himself. I have freakin' 25 pages of quotes from this book! I'll try to narrow it down to a few highlights here.
QUOTES:
"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? Why is everything twisted of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don’t know. I’ve never known it. I’d like to understand." (Roark to the Dean)
"I have, let’s say, 60 years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to 60 years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one." (Roark to the Dean)
"I don’t propose to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me." (Roark to the Dean)
"Roark smiled, without resentment or interest." (toward Peter)
"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." (Dominique)
"If I’m correct in gathering that you’re criticizing mankind in general." (Scarret)
"You know, it’s such a peculiar thing--our idea of mankind in general. We all have a sort of vague, glowing picture when we say that, something solemn, big and important. But actually all we know of it is the people we meet in our lifetime." (Dominique)
"What do you want? Perfection?" (Scarret)
"--or nothing. So you see, I take the nothing." (Dominique)
"That doesn’t make sense." (Scarret)
"I take the only desire one can really permit oneself. Freedom." (Dominique)
"You call that freedom?" (Scarret)
"To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing." (Dominique)
"Dominique had spent so many summers and winters, surrounding herself with people in order to feel alone, that the experiment of actual solitude was an enchantment to her"
"Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it’s least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line." (Dominique)
"Quite. That’s why I like to talk to you. It’s such a waste to be subtle and vicious with people who don’t even know that you’re being subtle and vicious. But the drivel is never accidental, Dominique." (Toohey)
"This was some enormous negative--as if everything had been wiped out, leaving a senseless emptiness, faintly indecent because it seemed so ordinary, so unexciting, like murder wearing a homey smile. Nothing was gone--except desire; no, more than that--the root, the desire to desire. He thought that a man who loses his eyes still retains the concept of sight; but he had heard of a ghastlier blindness--if the brain centers controlling vision are destroyed, one loses even the memory of visual perception." (Wynand)
"There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind." (Wynand)
"He kept the details of his life secret by making it glaringly public as a whole." (Wynand)
"Through the years the thought of suicide had occurred to him, not as an intention, but as one of the many possibilities among the chances of life. He examined it indifferently, with polite curiosity, as he examined any possibility--and then forgot it." (Wynand)
"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--a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings, and words. All words… You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only without the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment." (Dominique to Peter)
"I’ve probably destroyed you. If I could care, I’d say I’m sorry. That was not my purpose." (Dominique to Peter)
"Most people go to very great length in order to convince themselves of their self-respect." (Wynand)
"Yes." (Dominique)
"And, of course, a quest for self-respect is proof of its lack" (Wynand)
"Yes." (Dominique)
"Do you see the meaning of a quest for self-contempt?" (Wynand)
"That I lack it." (Dominique)
"And that you’ll never achieve it." (Wynand)
"You’re the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn’t make sense." (Peter)
"Maybe the concepts don’t make sense. Maybe they don’t mean what people have been taught to think they mean." (Roark)
"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. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing." (Roark to Wynand)
"If this boat were sinking, I’d 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 couldn’t and wouldn’t live for you." (Roark to Wynand)
"Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they will achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. 'Universal Harmony.' 'Eternal Spirit.' 'Divine Purpose.' 'Nirvana.' 'Paradise.' 'Racial Supremacy.' 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.'" (Toohey to Peter)
"Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon." (Roark, courtroom speech)
"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 reasoning--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." (Roark, courtroom speech)
"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." (Roark, courtroom speech)
"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." (Roark, courtroom speech)
