Rearden Quotes

#1. will, when he gets here. But, boy! - I'd work for him as a cinder sweeper. He'd blast through this valley like a rocket. He'd triple everybody's production." "Who's that?" "Hank Rearden.

Ayn Rand

#2. There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden," Francisco said softly, "except one: the refusal to think.

Ayn Rand

#3. Watching Larkin's efforts, Rearden felt what he did when he watched an ant struggling under the load of a matchstick. It's so hard for him, thought Rearden, and so easy for me.

Ayn Rand

#4. Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, fighting an enemy more dangerous than weariness or fear: revulsion against the thought of having to deal with human beings.

Ayn Rand

#5. Ferris: Are you going to be as impractical as that? Rearden: The evaluation of an action as practical, Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. Ferris: Haven't you always placed your self-interest above all else? Rearden: That is what I am doing right now.

Ayn Rand

#6. He walked with an effortless speed, feeling relaxed by a form of activity that was natural to him.

Ayn Rand

#7. The action of naming an issue instead of evading it, was so unlike the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden, startling relief ...

Ayn Rand

#8. He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted.

Ayn Rand

#9. Vision (know what you want)
Passion (know why you want it)
Commitment (know how you're going to get there)

Renee Rearden

#10. He saw, on their faces, that stubbornly evasive look ... the look of a man cheating himself of his own consciousness.

Ayn Rand

#11. Man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.

Ayn Rand

#12. Nothing can justify injustice.

Ayn Rand

#13. The evaluation of an action as 'practical,' depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.

Ayn Rand

#14. Don't tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.

Ayn Rand

#15. Don't try it."
"What?"
"To win any battle when I set the terms."
She did not answer. She was struck by what the words made her feel; it was not an emotion, but a physical sensation of pleasure ...

Ayn Rand

#16. On't worry about the goddamn bastards. The two words sounded shockingly violent, because his face and voice remained calm.

Ayn Rand

#17. They want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us.

Ayn Rand

#18. When he did not smile, his face looked inanimate, only his eyes remained alive, active with a cold, brilliant clarity of perception.

Ayn Rand

#19. He led her to the bedroom, he took off her clothes, without a word, in the manner of an owner undressing a person whose consent is not required. He clasped the pendant on her shoulders. She stood naked, the stone between her breasts, like a sparkling drop of blood.

Ayn Rand

#20. If you believe that you have the right to force me - use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

Ayn Rand

#21. He had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

Ayn Rand

#22. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation.

Ayn Rand

#23. What are you laughing at?"
"It's wonderful."
"What?"
"The way you don't react as everybody else does nowadays.

Ayn Rand

#24. If, to him, love was a celebration of one's self and of existence - then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only form and equivalent of love.

Ayn Rand

#25. They had counted on his pity and dreaded his anger; they had not dared consider the third alternative: his indifference.

Ayn Rand

#26. Dagny, why is it that most women would never admit that, but you do?"
"Because they're never sure that they ought to be wanted. I am."
"I do admire self-confidence."
"Self-confidence was only one part of what I said, Hank."
"What's the whole?"
"Confidence of my value - and yours.

Ayn Rand

#27. When you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.

Ayn Rand

#28. You always play it open, don't you?" he asked.
"I've never noticed you doing otherwise."
"I thought I was the only one who could afford to.

Ayn Rand

#29. Wondering how one went about forcing one's mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty.

Ayn Rand

#30. But don't I have any freedom of speech?"
"In your own house. Not in mine."
"Don't I have a right to my own ideas?"
"At your own expense. Not at mine."
"Don't you tolerate any differences of opinion?"
"Not when I'm paying the bills.

Ayn Rand

#31. I like to deal with somebody who has no illusions about getting favors.

Ayn Rand

#32. I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money.

Ayn Rand

#33. He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment.

Ayn Rand

#34. Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.

Ayn Rand

#35. He was seeing the full extent of her failure - in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him.

Ayn Rand

#36. There's no way to make the irrational work.

Ayn Rand

#37. The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.

Ayn Rand

#38. We lived by that which we held to be good and punished that which we held to be evil. You live by that which you denounce as evil and punish that which you know to be good.

Ayn Rand

#39. Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?"
"Good God, no!"
"Only that kind of man spends his life running after women.

Ayn Rand

#40. He knew that the conference was a trap; he knew also that he was walking into it with nothing for any trappers to gain.

Ayn Rand

#41. The human shapes moving past him in the streets of the city were physical objects without any meaning.

Ayn Rand

#42. This was the simple essence of his universe: the instantaneous refusal to submit to disaster, the irresistible drive to fight it, the triumphant feeling of his own ability to win.

Ayn Rand

#43. There was no guilt in his face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.

Ayn Rand

#44. He stood looking at her as if it took all of his effort to keep his eyes directed at her face, to keep seeing her, to endure the sight. "What do you want?" he asked.

Ayn Rand

#45. If you intend to keep your word, don't talk about it, just do it.

Ayn Rand