What I want you to understand, is the full evil of those who claim to have become convinced that this earth, by its nature, is a realm of malevolence where the good has no chance to win. Let them check their premises. Let them check their standards of value. Let them check - before they grant themselves the unspeakable license of evil-as-necessity - whether they know what is the good and what are the conditions it requires.

So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. . . . When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him by force. It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own.

The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

Toohey: "Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us." Roark: "But I don't think of you.

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently; they are most helplessly in its power.

Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? 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 out 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.