Fountainhead Quotes

If ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself - that will be the man who's not after your soul. ~ Ayn Rand

The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved the simplicity. ~ Ayn Rand

Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? 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? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand. ~ Ayn Rand

The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary act - the process of reason - must be performed by each man alone. ~ Ayn Rand

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

I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. ~ Clarence Thomas

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

The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive. To a creator, all relations with men are secondary. "The basic need of the second-hander is to secure his ties with men in order to be fed. He places relations first. He declares that man exists in order to serve others. He preaches altruism. "Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for others and place others above self. "No man can live for another. He cannot share his spirit just as he cannot share his body. But the second-hander has used altruism as a weapon of exploitation and reversed the base of mankind's moral principles. Men have been taught every precept that destroys the creator. Men have been taught dependence as a virtue. ~ Ayn Rand

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

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul - would you understand why that's much harder? ~ Ayn Rand

She had nothing to hide from him, nothing to keep unstated, everything was granted, answered, found. ~ Ayn Rand

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

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

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

Sometimes the routes leading to feelings of anger are so convoluted and circuitous that it takes enormous skill to discern their original source, or fountainhead. But regardless of the reason for or the source of the anger or the relative ease or complexity in perceiving either the anger or its source - everybody, but everybody, gets angry. ~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

Let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Your soul has a single basic function-the act of valuing. ~ Ayn Rand

Through the perfectly-formed chalice archetype, one discovers the fountainhead of reality: that one's Original Grace (consciousness's units of sand flowing and shaping themselves to form the chalice of reality) creates the divine alignment. Because of the Psychic Informational Dynamics of Consciousness, if the Outer Ego becomes too isolated or disparaged, dreams will remind of its alignment with the Greater Self's deeply-held archetypes. Such a unifying system allows one to forever evolve their unique creativity while remaining part of the Universal (God) Force. ~ Hope Bradford

Every stylish man should have a copy of 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand on his bookshelf. ~ Orlando Bloom

Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed. ~ Karl Marx

But now, where the spirit of the Western nationalism prevails, the whole people is being taught from boyhood to foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means - by the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them, by setting up memorials of events, very often false, which for the sake of humanity should be speedily forgotten, thus continually brewing evil menace towards neighbours and nations other than their own. This is poisoning the very fountainhead of humanity. It is discrediting the ideals, which were born of the lives of men who were our greatest and best. It is holding up gigantic selfishness as the one universal religion for all nations of the world. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Creation comes before distribution
or there will be nothing to distribute. ~ Ayn Rand

The daily adoration or visit to the Blessed Sacrament is the practice which is the fountainhead of all devotional works ~ Pope Pius X

She seemed to find him suitable as an inconsequential companion for an occasional, inconsequential evening. He thought that she liked him. ~ Ayn Rand

Criticism is the fountainhead of control. ~ Susan Forward

A Word Of Thanks
To these I know a debt past telling:
My several muses, harsh and kind;
My folks, who stood my sulks and yelling,
And (in the long run) did not mind;
Dead legislators, whose orations
I've filched to mix my own potations;
Indeed, all those whose brains I've pressed,
Unmerciful, because obsessed;
My own dumb soul, which on a pittance
Survived to weave this fictive spell;
And, gentle reader, you as well,
The fountainhead of all remittance.
Buy me before good sense insists
You'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists. ~ Vikram Seth

She said it quite correctly; there was nothing offensive in the quiet politeness of her voice; but following his high note of enthusiasm, her voice struck a tone that seemed flat and deadly in its indifference - as if the two sounds mingled into an audible counterpoint around the melodic thread of her contempt. ~ Ayn Rand

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

Observing the stream of eternal and simple truth is the same for all who look upon the fountainhead of consciousness. ~ Bryant McGill

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. ~ Ayn Rand

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill. ~ Bernard Of Clairvaux

To what level of depravity has a society descended when it condemns a man simply because he is strong and great? ~ Ayn Rand

21st century is the century of knowledge and the world has always looked at India whenever knowledge finds prominence. Emergence of knowledge society is no more a slogan but has become a reality. Knowledge will be the fountainhead of all the activities that happen in human development. ~ Narendra Modi

The particular aspect of history which both attracts and benefits its readers is the examination of causes and the capacity, which is the reward of this study, to decide in each case the best policy to follow. Now in all political situations we must understand that the principle factor which makes for success or failure is the form of a state's constitution: it is from this source, as if from a fountainhead, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfillment. ~ Polybius

Look," said Roark evenly, and pointed at the window. "Can you see the campus and the town? Do you see how many men are walking and living down there? Well, I don't give a damn what any or all of them think about architecture - or about anything else, for that matter. Why should I consider what their grandfathers thought of it? ~ Ayn Rand

But not only is the Shema the fountainhead and bedrock of all oneness theology, it is also the fountainhead and bedrock of all theology. ~ John Carroll

I grew up reading 'The Fountainhead' and I can never ever get enough of this book. Most of the sentences are tattooed to my Soul. ~ Avijeet Das

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

A conclusive mind cannot be a creative mind. ~ Amit Kalantri

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. ~ Ayn Rand

Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea. ~ Ayn Rand

It was a strange glance; she had noticed it before; a glance of simple worship. And it made her realize that there is a stage of worship which makes the worshiper himself an object of reverence. ~ Ayn Rand

For three years, ever since he had lived in Stanton, he had come here for his only relaxation, to swim, to rest, to think, to be alone and alive, whenever he could find one hour to spare, which had not been often. In his new freedom the first thing he had wanted to do was to come here, because he knew that he was coming for the last time. ~ Ayn Rand

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

She found a dark satisfaction in pain - because that pain came from him. ~ Ayn Rand

Rulers exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter. ~ Ayn Rand

Still, I again remind you that faith is only the channel or aqueduct, and not the fountainhead, and we must not look so much to it as to exalt it above the divine source of all blessing which lies in the grace of God. Never make a Christ out of your faith, nor think of as if it were the independent source of your salvation. Our life is found in "looking unto Jesus," not in looking to our own faith. By faith all things become possible to us; yet the power is not in the faith, but in the God upon whom faith relies. Grace is the powerful engine, and faith is the chain by which the carriage of the soul is attached to the great motive power. The righteousness of faith is not the moral excellence of faith, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ which faith grasps and appropriates. The peace within the soul is not derived from the contemplation of our own faith; but it comes to us from Him who is our peace, the hem of whose garment faith touches, and virtue comes out of Him into the soul. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Integers are the fountainhead of all mathematics. ~ Hermann Minkowski

History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead. ~ Wilbur Smith

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

The human spirit. The heroic in man. The aspiration and the fulfillment, both. Uplifted in its quest--and uplifting by its own essence. Seeking God--and finding itself. Showing that there is no higher reach beyond its own form.... ~ Ayn Rand

Have you ever found your heart's desire and then lost it? I had seen myself, a portrait of myself as a reader. My childhood: days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew, forbidden books read secretively late at night. Teenage years reading -trying to read- books I'd heard were important, Naked Lunch, and The Fountainhead, Ulysses and Women in Love ... It was as though I had dreamt the perfect lover, who vanished as I woke, leaving me pining and surly. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

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

That man, the unsubmissive and first, stands in the opening chapter of every legend mankind has recorded about its beginning. Prometheus was chained to a rock and torn by vultures - because he had stolen the fire of the gods. Adam was condemned to suffer - because he had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Whatever the legend, somewhere in the shadows of its memory mankind knew that its glory began with one and that that one paid for his courage. ~ Ayn Rand

Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?"
"Yes."
"My dear fellow, who will let you?"
"That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me? ~ Ayn Rand

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. ~ Ayn Rand

She came back many days later. She saw him, unexpectedly, on a flat stretch of stone before
her, by the side of the path. She stopped short. She did not want to come too close. It was
strange to see him before her, without the defence and excuse of distance. ~ Ayn Rand

Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely. ~ Ayn Rand

Love and faith are not common companions. More commonly power and fear consort with faith ... Power is not to be crossed; one must respect and obey. Power means strength, whereas love is a human frailty the people mistrust. It is a sad fact of life that power and fear are the fountainheads of faith. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

As a psychotherapist I see that nothing does as much for an individual's self-esteem as becoming aware of and accepting disowned parts of the self. The, first steps of healing and growth are awareness and acceptance - consciousness and integration. They are the fountainhead of personal development. ~ Nathaniel Branden

Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it. ~ Ayn Rand

A man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress. ~ Ayn Rand

What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You don't think through another's brain and you don't work through another's hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. ~ Ayn Rand

For God is good - or rather, of all goodness He is the Fountainhead. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

I came here to say that 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. I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. - Howard Roark ~ Ayn Rand

And, after all, you've got to live."
"Not that way," said Roark. ~ Ayn Rand

Roark, floating like a piece of driftwood, held a power greater than that of the engine in the belly of the yacht. Wynand thought: Because that is the power from which the engine has come. ~ Ayn Rand

He seemed as graciously at home as in the best restaurants of the city; his elegance had an odd quality here - it did not insult the place, but seemed to transform it, like the presence of a king who never alters his manner, yet makes a palace of any house he enters. ~ Ayn Rand

I don't like people who try to say only what they think I think. ~ Ayn Rand

Dominique, it's abnormal to feel so strongly about anything." "That's the only way I can feel. Or not at all. ~ Ayn Rand

What kind of a tragedy did you have in your childhood?"
"Why, none at all. I had a wonderful childhood. Free and peaceful and not bothered too much by anybody. Well, yes, I did feel bored very often. But I'm used to that. ~ Ayn Rand

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

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

She thought how strange it would be if she ever said 'Hello' to him. One did not greet oneself each morning. ~ Ayn Rand

Roark spoke quietly. He was the only man in the room who felt certain of his own words. ~ Ayn Rand

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

She came unannounced, certain of finding him there and alone. In his room, there was no necessity to spare, lie, agree and erase herself out of being. Here she was free to resist, to see her resistance welcomed by an adversary too strong to fear a contest, strong enough to need it; she found a will granting her the recognition of her own entity, untouched and not to be touched except in clean battle, to win or to be defeated, but to be preserved in victory or defeat, not ground into the meaningless pulp of the impersonal. ~ Ayn Rand

The Eucharist is not only a particularly intense expression of the reality of the Church's life, but also in a sense its fountainhead. The Eucharist feeds and forms the Church: 'Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread' (1 Cor 10:17, RSV). Because of this vital link with the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, the mystery of the Church is savored, proclaimed, and lived supremely in the Eucharist. ~ Pope John Paul II

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

He spent several days deciding on the artifacts. Much longer than he had spent deciding to kill himself, and approximately the same time required to get that many reds. He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. That way he would indict the system and achieve something by his death, over and above what the death itself achieved. Actually, he was not as sure in his mind what the death achieved as what the two artifacts achieved; but anyhow it all added up ... ~ Philip K. Dick

She knew that neither his clothes nor the years stood between her and the living intactness of that memory. ~ Ayn Rand

I'd rather be kind than right. ~ Ayn Rand

You're so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God's part that there's one person who matches inside and out. ~ Ayn Rand

God is goodness itself, in whom all goodness is involved. If therefore we love other things for the goodness which we see in them, why do we not love God, in whom is all goodness? All other things are but sparks of that fire, and drops of that sea. If you see any good in the creature, remember there is much more in the Creator. Leave therefore the streams, and go to the fountainhead of comfort. ~ Richard Sibbes

INTELLECT AND ITS NOBLE NATURE. The noble nature of knowledge has been revealed through intellect. Intellect is the source and fountainhead of knowledge and its foundation. Knowledge is like the fruit of a tree and it flows from intellect, or like the light of the sun or like the vision of the eye. Why should it not be honored when it is the cause of fortune in this world and the next? What is there to distinguish between beasts and men except intellect? Even a ferocious beast which has got more strength than man fears a man at seeing him as it knows that he may put him into snare on account of his intellect. ~ Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

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

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

The last book I read was the book I've been rereading most of my life, The Fountainhead. ~ Vince Vaughn

Criticism, for a book, is a truthful, unfaked badge of attention, signaling that it is not boring; and boring is the only very bad thing for a book. Consider the Ayn Rand phenomenon: her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead have been read for more than half a century by millions of people, in spite of, or most likely thanks to, brutally nasty reviews and attempts to discredit her. The first-order information is the intensity: what matters is the effort the critic puts into trying to prevent others from reading the book, or, more generally in life, it is the effort in badmouthing someone that matters, not so much what is said. So if you really want people to read a book, tell them it is "overrated," with a sense of outrage (and use the attribute "underrated" for the opposite effect). ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

...Opinion without a rational process. ~ Ayn Rand

And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. ~ Ayn Rand

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone. ~ Ayn Rand

"You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead" ~ Ayn Rand

It was strange to be conscious of another person's existence, to feel it as a close, urgent necessity; a necessity without qualifications, neither pleasant nor painful, merely final like an ultimatum. It was important to know that she existed in the world; it was important to think of her, of how she had awakened this morning, of how she moved, with her body still his, now his forever, of what she thought. ~ Ayn Rand

He stood looking up at her; it was not a glance, but an act of ownership. She thought she must let her face give him the answer he deserved. But she was looking, instead, at the stone dust on his burned arms, the wet shirt clinging to his ribs, the lines of his long legs. She was thinking of those statues of men she had always sought; she was wondering what he would look like naked. She saw him looking at her as if he knew that. ~ Ayn Rand

I love you so much that nothing can matter to me - not even you ... Only my love- not your answer. Not even your indifference ~ Ayn Rand

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

Most people guard against going into the fire and so end up in it. Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are cheated with this reversal. The trickery goes further. The voice of the fire tells the truth, sayin I am not fire. I am fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks. If you are a friend of the presence, fire is your water. ~ Rumi

He looked at Roark and saw the calmest, kindest face - a face without a hint of pity. It did not look like the countenance of men who watch the agony of another with a secret pleasure, uplifted by the sight of a beggar who needs their compassion; it did not bear the cast of the hungry soul that feeds upon another's humiliation. ~ Ayn Rand

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