Atlas Shrugged, Part 3 Chapter 1: Atlantis

Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago to Books
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Summary: Dagny crash lands in the Gulch, and meets John Galt (and others). She takes a tour, and hears their stories.

Start by reading the first-tier comments, which are all quotes of Ayn Rand (some of my favorites, some just important for other reasons). Comment on your favorite ones, or others' comments. Don't see your favorite quote? Post it in a new comment. Please reserve new comments for Ayn Rand, and your non-Rand quotes for "replies" to the quotes or discussion. (Otherwise Rand's quotes will get crowded out and pushed down into oblivion. You can help avoid this by "voting up" the Rand quotes, or at least the ones you especially like, and voting down first-tier comments that are not quotes of the featured book.)

Atlas Shrugged was written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

My idea for this post is discussed here:

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...

All Comments

  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes, I agree that the dollar sign is great. The souvenir coin has it; the book version didn't. I still wonder why the change.

    Both coins had the Liberty. I don't mind it. The Gulchers were on strike of what the US had become. But they in the Gulch affirmed many of the founding principles that the US started with, and principles of freedom which the Statue expressed.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I see why you would think that. Maybe, but I didn't take it that way. She asked what people called it, and he just answered pretty straight-forwardly. He just preferred to point to its ownership (Mulligan) rather than its inspiration (Galt).
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Is this humility on JG's part? That would seem to be incongruous for a man who is proud of his accomplishments.
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  • Posted by VetteGuy 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I actually think the dollar sign is a better symbol for currency used inside the Gulch. The Statue of Liberty is more of a U.S. symbol, and the Gulchers were on strike against what the U.S. had become.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Dagny to Galt: “What do they call this place?” she asked.
    “I call it Mulligan’s Valley,” he said. “The others call it Galt’s Gulch.”
    “I’d call it – ” but she did not finish.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “Now you know the exact nature of the choice you’ll have to make. If it seems hard, it’s because you still think that it does not have to be one or the other. You will learn that it does.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “We had no rules of any kind,” said Galt, “except one. When a man took out oath, it meant a single commitment: not to work in his own profession, not to give to the world the benefit of his mind.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Galt: “Ever since I can remember, I had felt that I would kill the man who’d claim that I exist for the sake of his need – and I had known that this was the highest moral feeling. That night, at the Twentieth Century meeting, when I heard an unspeakable evil being spoken in the tone of moral righteousness, I saw the root of the world’s tragedy, the key to it and the solution. I saw what had to be done. I went out to do it.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Dr. Hendricks: “I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything – except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am an artist. A musician by trade. I'm still having a hard time understanding what she is getting at here. Does anyone know if she addressed this anywhere else?
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Galt: “The victims are on strike. We are on strike against martyrdom – and against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another. We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced in body or in spirit.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Dagny: “Why?” she cried. “Why? What are you doing, all of you?”
    “We are on strike,” said John Galt… “This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart. This is the mind of strike.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    So I suspect that most of us here in the Gulch would affirm the oath. But we all have our own way of practicing it here and now. Galt seems to think his way is the only way. That all who, like Dagny, decide to remain in society are not being true to the vow. Do you think this is true?

    I personally embrace the vow (I renounce slavery and the Code of Death), but am willing to live temporarily under this inverted morality that American society (inconsistently) is. I invest most of my time accumulating resources (assets, capital), and I invest some of my time seeking political reform. Eventually, unless things turn around here, I will want to seek a new place to live with more protection of our freedoms, even if that means our own Objectivist Gulch.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “It’s the oath that was taken by every person in this valley, but you.”
    She said, looking at the words, “This has always been my own rule of living.”
    “I know it.”
    “But I don’t think that yours is the way to practice it.”
    “Then you’ll have to learn which one of us is wrong.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    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.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago in reply to this comment.
    What does this mean? To say that gold or silver has objective value? Doesn’t the value of a thing depend on people willing (subjective) to use it for trade? WTSHTF, water and guns will have more value than gold coins, right?
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Dagny to Galt: “What do you use for small change?”
    “Mulligan mints that, too, in silver. We don’t accept any other currency in this valley. We accept nothing but objective values.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    “They were miniature disks of shining gold, smaller than pennies, the kind that had not been in circulation since the days of Nat Taggart; they bore the head of the Statue of Liberty on one side, the words ‘United States of America – One Dollar’ on the other, but the dates stamped upon them were of the past two years.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Stockton: “Any man who’s afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who’s in a business where he doesn’t belong. To me – the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Dagny: She glanced at Stockton with curiosity. “Aren’t you training a man who could become your most dangerous competitor?”
    “That’s the only sort of men I like to hire. Dagny, have you lived too long among the looters? Have you come to think that one man’s ability is a threat to another?”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Wyatt: “Down what drain were they poured out there, our days, our lives and our energy? … Here, we trade achievements, not failures – values, not needs. We’re free of one another, yet we all grow together. Wealth, Dagny? What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing?”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 7 months ago
    Wyatt to Dagny: “But I’m richer now than I was in the world. What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster. And that’s what I’m doing: I’m manufacturing time.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m producing everything I need, I’m working to improve my methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life.”
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