In that world, youll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit you have known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe. We do not recognize such duty. Physical labor as such can extend no further than the range of the moment. Ayn Rand. I pronounced it. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. But your game is up, because now we know it, too. A psychologist helping a neurotic to solve a problem and untangle a conflict, does it by means ofblank-out. As this double-jointed, double-standard morality splits you in half, so it splits mankind into two enemy camps: one is you, the other is all the rest of humanity. Just as man cant exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate ones rights into realityto think, to work and to keep the resultswhich means: the right of poverty. Once, you believed it was "only a compromise": you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. :) So many people skip Galts Speech, it can be confronting Which is good, acknowledging what is, is freedom. When you clamor for public ownership of the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of the mind. Your victims took the blame and struggled on, with your curses as reward for their martyrdomwhile you went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough to practice it. We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter, a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate homes. It is your moral code thats through, this time. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. : Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 344.Criticism. Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you seekwhich is yours for the taking. The problem of production, they tell you, has been solved and deserves no study or concern; the only problem left for your reflexes to solve is now the problem of distribution. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omnisciencethat your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infalliblethat an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. You whove never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as misguided idealistsmay the God you invented forgive you!they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. He believes that physical objects are endowed with a mysterious volition, moved by causeless, unpredictable whims, while he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control. A is A. Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these twoexistence and consciousnessare axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end. We are on strike against self-immolation. To love is to value. Where did you get this from? Because you were unable to live by holding death as your standard of value? The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Do you say it is the spirit that such men have renounced? Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of ones values. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Only when men discovered that nature was a firm, predictable absolute were they able to rely on their knowledge, to choose their course, to plan their future and, slowly, to rise from the cave. To exist is to possess identity. Centuries ago, the man who wasno matter what his errorsthe greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. You blank out the fact that most mystics of muscle started out as mystics of spirit, that they keep switching from one to the other, that the men you call materialists and spiritualists are only two halves of the same dissected human, forever seeking completion, but seeking it by swinging from the destruction of the flesh to the destruction of the soul and vice versathat they keep running from your colleges to the slave pens of Europe to an open collapse into the mystic muck of India, seeking any refuge against reality, any form of escape from the mind. Your mind is your only judge of truthand if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. If you find a chance to vanish into some wilderness out of their reach, do so, but not to exist as a bandit or to create a gang competing with their racket; build a productive life of your own with those who accept your moral code and are willing to struggle for a human existence. Who solved the problem of production? By what standard do you damn him when you claim it? It was not built by men who sought self-immolation or by men who sought handouts. Whether your failure is just or not, whether your wishes are rational or not, whether your misfortune is undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you a right to rewards. The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be. My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence existsand in a single choice: to live. I am now entering my 60s having had a succesful and prosperous life. The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden. Then, one night at a factory meeting, I heard myself sentenced to death by reason of my achievement. Do not try to live on your enemies terms or to win at a game where theyre setting the rules. The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle. John Galt (novelist) The Provost It never seems to find a balance where an orfaned disabled child is cared for by equal contributions by all others. You may make an error at any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity, or you may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort of the questbut if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. You can choose either; you cant have both. When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit. I am the man who knew what made it possible and who chose consistently to practice and to be what you had practiced and been in that one moment. Men do not live by the mind, you say? An emotion is a response to a face of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards. You regard as in the public interest any project serving those who do not pay; it is not in the public interest to provide any services for those who do the paying. You are the only servant, the rest are the masters, you are the only giver, the rest are the takers, you are the eternal debtor, the rest are the creditors never to be paid off.

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