Quotes About Howard Roark

#1. "You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead"

Ayn Rand

#2. I think everything I do has Howard Roark [hero of The Fountainhead] in it, you know, as much as anything. The person I write for is Howard Roark.

Neil Peart

#3. HOWARD ROARK LAUGHED. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him.

Ayn Rand

#4. Your ego is the strictest judge.
-Howard Roark in his speech at his trial.

Ayn Rand

#5. Howard Roark stood as a role model for me - as exactly the way I already was living. Even at that tender age [18] I already felt that. And it was intuitive or instinctive or inbred stubbornness or whatever; but I had already made those choices and suffered for them.

Neil Peart

#6. But I don't think of you.

(Howard Roark)

Ayn Rand

#7. You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.
- Howard Roark

Ayn Rand

#8. A man's spirit is his self. That entity which is his consciousness. To think, to feel, to judge, to act are functions of the ego.

Ayn Rand

#9. All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil.

Ayn Rand

#10. I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.

Ayn Rand

#11. He does not achieve through other men nor for other men, he achieves through and for himself alone, then offers it to others.

Ayn Rand

#12. What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word - 'Yes.' The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance.

Ayn Rand

#13. Keating felt naked ... People were his protection against people. Roark had no sense of people. Others gave Keating a feeling of his own value. Roark gave him nothing.

Ayn Rand

#14. You're not even boasting about it."
"Should I?"
"You can't. You're too arrogant to boast.

Ayn Rand

#15. Roark threw his head up once, for a flash of a second, to look at Heller across the table. It was all the introduction they needed; it was like a handshake.

Ayn Rand

#16. Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words.

Ayn Rand

#17. He was usually disliked, from the first sight of his face, anywhere he went. His face was closed like the door of a safety vault; things locked in safety vaults are valuable; men did not care to feel that.

Ayn Rand

#18. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.

Ayn Rand

#19. Roark stood before them as each man stands in the innocence of his own mind. But Roark stood like that before a hostile crowd - and they knew suddenly that no hatred was possible to him.

Ayn Rand

#20. His face was like a law of nature - a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.

Ayn Rand

#21. She wondered why she had never noticed that she did not know his name and why she had never asked him. Perhaps because she had known everything she had to know about him from that first glance.

Ayn Rand

#22. I want to sleep with you. Now, tonight, and at any time you may care to call me. I want your naked body, your skin. your mouth, your hands ... - I want you like an animal ... or a whore.

Ayn Rand

#23. She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory.

Ayn Rand

#24. I'll listen if you want me to ... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don't mind that, I don't mind listening.

Ayn Rand

#25. She stopped over the ledge where he worked and she stood watching him openly. When he raised his head, she did not turn away. Her glance told him that she knew the meaning of her action, but did not respect him enough to conceal it. His glance told her only that he had expected her to come.

Ayn Rand

#26. She found a dark satisfaction in pain - because that pain came from him.

Ayn Rand

#27. I don't think a man can hurt another, not in any important way. Neither hurt him nor help him. I have really nothing to forgive you.

Ayn Rand

#28. What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."
"Isn't it?

Ayn Rand

#29. Every living thing is integrated. Do you know what that means? Whole, pure, complete, unbroken. Do you know what constitutes an integrating principle? A thought. The one thought, the single thought that created the thing and every part of it. The thought which no one can change or touch.

Ayn Rand

#30. Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that?

Ayn Rand

#31. Don't you know that most people take most things because that's what's given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?

Ayn Rand

#32. She saw the man below looking at her, she saw the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to look at her now. She turned her head away.

Ayn Rand

#33. I hate incompetence. I think it's probably the only thing I do hate. But it didn't make me want to rule people. Nor to teach them anything. It made me want to do my own work in my own way and let myself be torn to pieces if necessary.

Ayn Rand

#34. And, after all, you've got to live."
"Not that way," said Roark.

Ayn Rand

#35. Men have been taught that the ego is the synonym of evil, and selflessness the ideal of virtue. But the creator is the egotist in the absolute sense, and the selfless man is the one who does not think, feel, judge or act. These are functions of the self.

Ayn Rand

#36. You knew better than that. And it's such an old one to me. My antisocial stubbornness is so well-known that I didn't think anyone would waste time trying to tempt me again.

Ayn Rand

#37. She had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found.

Ayn Rand

#38. It's a law of survival, isn't it? - to seek the best. I didn't come for your sake. I came for mine.

Ayn Rand

#39. Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he'd taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.

Ayn Rand

#40. The best is a matter of standards - and I set my own standards.

Ayn Rand

#41. Her face looked as if she knew his worst suffering and it was hers and she wished to bear it like this, coldly, asking no words of mitigation.

Ayn Rand

#42. The crowd would have forgiven anything, except a man who could remain normal under the vibrations of its enormous collective sneer.

Ayn Rand

#43. The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio.

Ayn Rand

#44. I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.

Ayn Rand

#45. Wynand asked: "Howard, have you ever been in love?" Roark turned to look straight at him and answer quietly: "I still am." "But when you walk through a building, what you feel is greater than that?" "Much greater, Gail.

Ayn Rand

#46. You're the most egotistical and the kindest man I know. And that doesn't make sense."
"Maybe the concepts don't make sense. Maybe they don't mean what people have been taught to think they mean.

Ayn Rand

#47. For people who enjoyed their own presence well enough and sought only a place where they would be left free to enjoy it.

Ayn Rand

#48. He was accustomed to hostility; this kind of benevolence was more offensive than hostility. He shrugged; he thought that he would be out of here soon and back in the simple, clean reality of his own office.

Ayn Rand

#49. He sat looking at her. She waited to see the derisive smile, but it did not come. The smile seemed implicit in the room itself, in her standing there, halfway across that room.

Ayn Rand

#50. Roark looked at him and understood. Roark inclined his head in agreement; he could acknowledge what Cameron had just declared to him only by a quiet glance as solemn as Cameron's.

Ayn Rand