[b]Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead
My dear fellow, who will let you?
That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?[/b]
Of course that’s all scripted.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
Of course who among us doesn’t bitch about that?
Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count?
Oh, indeed.
On the other hand, he thought, what best friends?
Don’t fool yourself, my dear. You’re much worse than a bitch. You’re a saint. Which shows why saints are dangerous and undesirable.
And, no, not just Mother Teresa.
But you see, said Roark quietly, I have, let’s say, sixty 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 sixty 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.
The irony of course being that for most in the workforce, capitalism is all but synonymous with alienated labor.
There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything.
Really, how idiotic is that!