Some Quotes from Book Atlas Shrugged

Here is a list of my favorite quotes from the book "Atlas Shrugged"...

• Two things were impossible to him: to stand still or to move aimlessly.
• Now they are hurrying because they are afraid. It’s not a purpose that drives them, it is fear.
• Describing un-successful life of a great man, “His life had been a summary of the lives of all the men whose reward is a monument in a public park a hundred years after the time when a reward can matter.”
• If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn
• She thought “A train has two great attributes of life: motion and purpose.
• If this was the enemy, there was nothing to fear.
• She had learned, in the slums of her childhood that honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted….
• I win by means of nothing but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic.
• Building is not done by abstaining from demolition.
• You reject your tool of perception – your mind – then complain that the universe is a mystery. You discard your key, then wail that all doors are locked against you.
• Suffering as such is not a value; only man’s fight against suffering is.

Describing Fransisco’s house in John Galt valley:
The place had the brightness, not of a home, but of a fresh wooden scaffolding erected to shelter the birth of a skyscraper.

Describing the shallowness of politics:
“Questions of truth do not enter into social issues. No principles have ever had any effect on society.” “What, then directs men’s actions?” He shrugged, “The expediency of the moment.”

Conversation between an inefficient family member who wants a position in his brothers factory, though he doesn’t deserve it.
“What will happen if I put you there and you ruin a heat of steel for me?” he asked. “What is more important, that your damn steel gets poured or that I eat?” replied Philips. “How do you propose to eat if the steel doesn’t get poured?”

When the author casts the spell of her sentences to describe things, feelings, emotions and incidences:

• The old newspaper man at gate of Taggart Terminal, “he seemed to be part of Taggart Terminal, like an old watchdog too feeble to protect it, but reassuring by loyalty of its presence”.
• But what one felt for a mind like Stadler’s was painfully close to love, it was that rarest of pleasures: admiration.
• ....Like the eyes of an adversary who fully intends to fight, but hopes to lose.
• …unrythmical abruptness of the involuntary….
• The courageous trust of a kitten when it sees a hand extended to play….