"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...you create a nation of lawbreakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden."
We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick and you’d better get wise to it.And the latter said:
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others. We are interested solely in power: not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; just power, pure power. What pure power means you will learn presently.I believe that all such socialist leaders indeed think exactly like Ferris and O’Brien, though. It’s the same way of thinking that comes from Satan.
We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?