Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Wow. Where do I even begin with this one?

This book is an 1168 page masterpiece. The story is intriguing, the writing is beautiful, and every page is stuffed with enlightened thinking. This book is not your average work of fiction, however. If you go into it with the expectation that it is, chances are that you will be severely disappointed. The actual story that Rand tells could easily be told in 350 pages. Easily...with pages to spare for fluffy writing. That means that about 800 pages of this book are chock-full of philosophy. I think that this must be expected in order to enjoy this book for what it is. I did not know this going into it and for about the first hundred pages or so I completely hated it. I could not understand why Rand kept rambling about the morality of industrialists when she could have been getting on with the plot! As soon as I figured out that this was not just a story however, I came to love what I was reading.

This was a book that really, truly changed me and I believe that it will stick with me for a very long time. Rand uses this book as an opportunity to disprove the philosophers of the past and present her own opinion of what is moral and right. I recognized the philosophies of John Stuart Mills, Kant and Aristotle in various parts of the book but I'm sure that someone who knew more about philosophy would recognize many more. It was fascinating to see her opinion of what was right and moral develop throughout the book.

In addition to her brilliant thinking, the story itself is pretty wonderful. The characters are complex and compelling. The plot is interesting and there were definitely moments when I simply couldn't put it down because I wanted to know what would happen next. Also, Rand is a magnificent writer. Listen to this:

"The houses stood like men in unpressed suits, who had lost the desire to stand straight: the cornices were like sagging shoulders, the crooked porch steps like torn hem lines, the broken windows like patches, mended with clapboard...A shell of concrete, which had been a schoolhouse, stood on the outskirts; it looked like a skull with the empty sockets of glassless windows, with a few strands of hair still clinging to it, in the shape of broken wires."

Isn't that just amazing!? I mean, come on! That is some pretty fantastic imagery. The book is just full of passages like this. It's really incredible. If you do decide to read it, pay special attention to the way that Rand gives mechanical things human qualities and vice versa. It's really interesting.

As I tried to define the ultimate message of this book, I struggled a bit. I'm not sure that there is just one...So here are a few of the big ones:
- It is good and moral to be productive.
- Need does not entitle anyone to anything.
- Thinking is what makes us human.
- Man is made to seek his own happiness.

Here is the definition of morality that I will try to live by because of this book: I will work hard to produce and create. I will only give to others by my own free will and choice. I will only give to those whom I believe will appreciate what I give them and will use my resources/labor for good.

There. What do you think? Is that good?

Favorite Quotes:

"Who is John Galt?"

(Part 1, Chapter 1, Page 1)

She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought---and never worried about it again.
- Dagny Taggart
(Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 51)
I love this quote!!! From now on, whenever I start to worry about what others might think about me I'm just going to say "to hell with that!"and do what I want!

"I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."
(Part 1, Chapter 3, Page 61)
I hate cigarettes, but love this imagery!

"There might be some sort of justification for the savage societies in which a man had to expect that enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself as best he could. But there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.”
— Hank Rearden
(Part 2, Chapter 1, Page 365)

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent."
- Francisco d'Aconia
(Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 411)

“...the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
(Part 2, Chapter 2, Page 412)

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
— Inscription
(Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 731)

“Through all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality to practice–it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction–only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 1, Page 738)

“...the United States. This country was the only country in history born, not of chance and blind tribal warfare, but as a rational product of man's mind.”
— Francisco d'Anconia
(Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 770)

“Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes–which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification–which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.”
— Richard Halley
(Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 782)

“No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 2, Page 798)

“From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. 'Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!'–'Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!'–'Don't argue, obey!'–'Don't try to understand, believe!'–'Don't rebel, adjust!–'Don't stand out, belong!'–'Don't struggle, compromise!'–'Your heart is more important than your mind!'–'Who are you to know? Your parents know best!'–'Who are you to know? Society knows best!'–'Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!'–'Who are you to object? All values are relative!'–'Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!'”
— Hank Rearden
(Part 3, Chapter 6, Page 994)

“An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what is good for it or evil... Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,013)

“By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man–every man–is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,014)

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,054)

“...the source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A–and Man is Man.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,061)
A is A. I love that.

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence... The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.”
— John Galt
(Part 3, Chapter 7, Page 1,062)
I have been saying this about national government for years.

“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 on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” " To Shrug."

“Robin Hood. He was the man who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I’m the man who robs from the poor and gives to the rich – or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.”
“This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does….Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”
– Ragnar Danneskjold

(Part 2, Chapter 7, Page 577)

This is my VERY FAVORITE quote. I love, love, love it.