Your best "Atlas Shrugged" quote?

Kolath | 10/23/13 | Kolath

[righttackle44]

Atlas Shrugged because he didn't have an answer.

[Dr. Pritchett]

On compromising with liberals:

“In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

[Bayard]

Social systems based on the premise that man is the measure of all things are always crooked avenues to the next tyranny.

[Mike Darancette]

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?"

"I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug.”

― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

[bolobaby]

I was always partial to...

“...it was the security of being first, with full sight and full knowledge of one’s course - not the blind sense of being pulled into the unknown by some unknown power ahead. It was the greatest sensation in existence: not to trust, but to know.”

[bigbob]

“I think, therefore I’ll think.”

[satan]

“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”

[Califreak]

Dr Ferris on laws or D’Anconia on money.

[FrdmLvr]

Okay, let’s get this one out of the way:
“Who is John Galt?”

I do like this, too:

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

[martin_fierro]

THERE ya go.

[TBP]

So many.

[skinkinthegrass]

so, so many...

[Fai Mao]

“We are John Galt”

[Mr. Jeeves]

[Rearden] felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant - and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours." -- Hank Rearden, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

I think of it every time a DemoFemiNazi splits off on TV about the conservative War on the Poor. :)

[Razz Barry]

“When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer.”
— Hank Rearden
Atlas Shrugged (Part 2, Chapter 6, Page 565)

[RavenATB]

I won’t post the quote, because it’s simply too long. But Francisco’s ‘Money’ Speech from Atlas Shrugged is epic. It’s something every child should have read (and explained) to them.

[gattaca]

My fav too

[Neidermeyer]

D’Anconia’s talk with Rearden at the party.

[wally_bert]

Hard to pick myself. Too many.