Galt's Gulch

Atlas Shrugged, Part 3 Chapter 2: The Utopia Of Greed

Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago to Books
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Summary: Dagny agreed to work for Galt, and then was reunited with d’Anconia. He explained his conversion, and they affirmed their love to each other, even though acknowledging that they would never again be together romantically. She had conversations with many other Gulchers about their conversions.

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...

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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “Some of us have wives and children, but there is a mutual trade involved in that, and a mutual payment” – he glanced at her – “of a kind I am not entitled to collect.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    “Hank!” she [Dagny] screamed, waving her arms in desperate signal. “Hank!”
    She fell back against the rock, knowing that she had no way to reach him, that she had no power to give him sight, that no power on earth could pierce that screen except his own mind and vision. Suddenly and for the first time, she felt the screen, not as the most intangible, but as the most grimly absolute barrier in the world.
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    • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
      I've been listening to the audio book, and this struck me. It seems to be an excellent picture of the philosophical antithesis. The divide between Objectivists and the rest of the world is the use of the mind.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Dagny to Galt: “You are going back to the outer world because I will be there.”
    “Yes.”
    “I do not want you to go.”
    “You have no choice about it.”
    “You are going for my sake.”
    “No, for mine…. I wouldn’t do it if I had no selfish end to gain.”
    “What selfish end?”
    “I want you here.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Dagny: “So long as men desire to live, I cannot lose my battle.”
    “Do they?” said Hugh Akston softly. “Do they desire it? No, don’t answer me now. I know that the answer was the hardest thing for any of us to grasp and to accept. Just take that question back with you, as the last premise left for you to check.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Galt: “If I go, it won’t be for anyone’s sake but mine – and I don’t think I’m risking my life, but if I am – well, I’m now free to risk it.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    “Did it ever occur to you, Miss Taggart,” said Galt, in the casual tone of an abstract discussion, but as if he had known her thoughts, “that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires – if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical? 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.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “If any part of your uncertainty,” said Galt, “is a conflict between your heart and your mind – follow your mind.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Dr. Akston to Dagny: “The mortal sin of Robert Stadler was that he never identified his proper homeland… He hated stupidity…He wanted his own way, he wanted to be left alone to pursue it, he wanted to brush people out of his path – and he never identified the means to it or the nature of his path and of his enemies. He took a short cut.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Akston: “…Robert Stadler. Of any one person, of any single guilt for the evil which is now destroying the world – his was the heaviest guilt. He had the mind to know better.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Akston: “They were majoring in two subjects: physics and philosophy. Their choice amazed everybody but me: modern thinkers considered it unnecessary to perceive reality, and modern physicists considered it unnecessary to think. I knew better; what amazed me was that these children knew it, too…”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Akston: “…and John, the self-made man, self-made in every sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less. Actually, he was the son of a gas-station mechanic at some forsaken crossroads in Ohio, and he had left home at the age of twelve to make his own way…”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    “Don’t be astonished, Miss Taggart,” said Dr. Akston, smiling, “and don’t make the mistake of thinking that these three pupils of mine are some sort of superhuman creatures. They’re something much greater and more astounding than that: they’re normal men – a thing the world has never seen – and their feat is that they managed to survive as such.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Richard Halley to Dagny: “If there is more tragic a fool than the businessman who doesn’t know that he’s an exponent of man’s highest creative spirit – it’s the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Richard Halley to Dagny: “Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes – which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification – which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Richard Halley to Dagny: “I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart – only by someone’s head. And when I find a customer with that invaluable capacity, then my performance is a mutual trade to mutual profit. An artist is a trader, Miss Taggart, the hardest and most exacting of all traders.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Richard Halley to Dagny: “That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. I don’t mean your enjoyment, I don’t mean your emotion – emotions be damned! – I mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoyment was of the same nature as mine, that it came from the same source: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgment of a mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that went to write it – I mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt what I wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work, but that you admire it for the things I wished to be admired.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Galt to Dagny: “I shall charge you for your room and board – it is against our rules to provide the unearned sustenance of another human being.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Ragnar to Dagny: “I am doing just what he [Galt] is doing – only in my own way. He is withdrawing man’s spirit from the looters, I’m withdrawing the products of man’s spirit. He is depriving them of reason, I’m depriving them of wealth. He is draining the soul of the world, I’m draining its body. His is the lesson they have to learn, only I’m impatient and I’m hastening their scholastic progress. But, like John, I’m simply complying with their moral code and refusing to grant them a double standard at my expense. Or at Rearden’s expense. Or at yours.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    Ragnar to Dagny: “That violence is not practical. If my fellow men believe that the force of the combined tonnage of their muscles is a practical means to rule me – let them learn the outcome of a contest in which there’s nothing but brute force on one side, and force ruled by a mind, on the other. Even John grants me that in our age I had the moral right to choose the course I’ve chosen.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 2 months ago
    “Don’t be shocked, Miss Taggart,” said Danneskjöld. “And don’t object. I’m used to objections. I’m a sort of freak here, anyway. None of them approve of my particular method of fighting our battle. John doesn’t, Dr. Akston doesn’t.”
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