A rational process is a moral process. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the quest - but if devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.

I got the idea [for Anthem's theme] in my school days, in Soviet Russia, when I heard all the vicious attacks on individualism, and asked myself what the world would be like if men lost the word 'I.'

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.

Dominique as Gail looks at her "... there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence."

It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money.