About Mike the construction worker, friend of Roark: "He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own filed and felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter."
Ayn RandShe thought how strange it would be if she ever said 'Hello' to him. One did not greet oneself each morning.
Ayn RandPeople think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What Iโve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders oneโs reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person oneโs master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that personโs view requires to be fakedโฆThe man who lies to the world, is the worldโs slave from then onโฆThere are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
Ayn RandManโs rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.
Ayn RandThe government has created a nation of paper criminals. People can be put in jail and lose civil rights and liberties through bureaucratic procedures.The only thing that is keeping you out of jail is government goodwill.
Ayn RandThe necessary consequence of man's right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative. If some "pacifist" society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it.
Ayn RandWell, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want--you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don't know. I've forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn't matter, so long as you move.
Ayn Rand