John Galt Author Quotes

John Galt was closer to the genial side of Scott, if with a narrower focus in the material he chose to write about - but for all that giving us, in thin disguise, real places and real changes in a real nation. He dealt above all with the West of Scotland, and was indeed a patriot of the region. It irked him that Edinburgh had won the epithet of Athens of the North and tried to create a fashion for calling Glasgow the Venice of the North; somehow this never caught on. ~ Michael Fry

You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. 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. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. ~ Ayn Rand

A face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt...The shape of his mouth was pride, and more: it was as if he took pride in being proud. The angular planes of his cheeks made her think of arrogance, of tension, of scorn - yet the face had none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene determination and of certainty, and the look of a ruthless innocence which would not seek forgiveness or grant it. It was a face that had nothing to hide or to escape, a face with no fear of being seen or of seeing, so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness of his eyes - he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world - to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that she was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness - yet she had never been so aware of a man's body. ~ Ayn Rand

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. ~ Ayn Rand

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice - and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man - by choice; he has to hold his life as a value - by choice; he has to learn to sustain it - by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues - by choice.
A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. ~ Ayn Rand

Our first rule here ... is that one must always see for oneself. ~ 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

Your mind is your only judge of truth-and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. ~ John Galt

Government power is always abused by seizing and perverting the law. And with few exceptions, government always determines what is law. ~ John Galt

Reason is your means of survival - so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'. ~ Ayn Rand

The anti-mind is the anti-life. ~ Ayn Rand

This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero. ~ Ayn Rand

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) ~ Ayn Rand

Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man's only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth. ~ Ayn Rand

I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil. ~ John Galt

If any part of your uncertainty is a conflict between your heart and your mind - follow your mind. ~ Ayn Rand

The cloven-foot of self-interest was now and then to be seen aneath the robe of public principle. ~ John Galt

Through all the ages the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiter - every form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation - every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squad - have been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection. Yet only to the extent to which - in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders - some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive. ~ Ayn Rand

And no one rose to ask the question: Good?-by what standard?
John Galt ~ Ayn Rand

It is our duty to help ane anither in this howling wilderness. ~ John Galt

Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose of morality is to curb man's instinct of self-preservation? It is for the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality. The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live. ~ Ayn Rand

John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less ... but I've always thought of him as if he had come into the world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from Jupiter's head, fully grown and fully armed. ~ Ayn Rand

This country was not built... by men who sought handouts. John Galt speech, Atlas Shrugged, 1957 ~ Alex Ayres

There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards. ~ John Galt

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification-that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly ... ~ John Galt

Do not let the hero in your soul parish, in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. ~ Ayn Rand

I will stop the motor of the world. ~ John Galt

We will not deal with men on any terms but ours - and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what they please. ~ Ayn Rand

There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value.
All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil. ~ Ayn Rand

Of course I'm all right, professor. I had to be. A is A.- John Galt ~ Ayn Rand

He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done. ~ Ayn Rand

From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes , a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity. ~ John Galt

Evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. ~ John Galt

She had caught the sound of suffering in the faintest exaggeration of evenness in his voice. ~ Ayn Rand

A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the question: True or False? - Right or Wrong? ~ Ayn Rand

There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another - if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't. ~ Ayn Rand