The Fountainhead Quotes

“It was a pedestal from which a god had been torn, and in his place there stood, not Satan with a sword, but a corner lout sipping a bottle of Coca-Cola.”

“Compromise now, because you’ll have to later, anyway.”

“The senseless is the major factor in our lives.”

“Catherine had said it, he was selfish; everybody was selfish; it was not a pretty thing, to be selfish, but he was not alone in it.”

“She thought, I’ve learned to bear anything except happiness. I must learn how to carry it.”

“But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.”

“They were simply four people who liked being there together.”

“I can’t live a life torn between that which exists—and you.”

“If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted—I’d have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We’re all so tied together.”

“Can’t you ever do things without reason, just like everybody else?”

“This is the time to merge his self in a great current, in the rising tide which is approaching to sweep us all, willing or unwilling, into the future.”

“You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want to show it.”

“Every form of happiness is private.”

“She had not noticed him take her hand; it seemed so natural and what she had wanted from the moment of seeing him”

“Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.”

“And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of self.”

“And what, incidentally, do you think integrity is? The ability not to pick a watch out of your neighbor’s pocket?”

“It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.”