Galt's Gulch

Atlas Shrugged, Part 3 Chapter 6: The Concerto of Deliverance.

Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago to Books
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Summary: Rearden learns of an amusing political scheme to try to “blackmail-through-virtue” him into remaining a slave to the inverted morality: his assets were seized, by “mistake.” His family begs him to not quit. Then the Washington cartel begs him not to quit. Rearden begins to see the end game of altruism, and leaves. When he arrives at his mills, he finds the Wet Nurse mortally wounded, and proceeds to fight off the staged riot. He was wounded, but saved by Francisco d’Anconia, who proceeded to persuade him to “retire.”

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Atlas Shrugged was written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    “In the moment of silence after the crash, it seemed to him that he heard Francisco’s voice, asking him quietly in the ballroom of this building, yet asking it also here and now: ‘Who is the guiltiest man in this room?’ He heard his own answer of the past: ‘I suppose – James Taggart?’ and Francisco’s voice saying without reproach: ‘No, Mr. Rearden, it’s not James Taggart,’ – but here, in this room and this moment, his mind answered: ‘I am.’”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    Rearden: “There is no way to make the irrational work.” There was no answer. “What can save you now?”
    “Oh, you’ll do something!” cried James Taggart.
    Then – even though it was only a sentence he had heard all his life – he felt a deafening crash within him.
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    Rearden: “I believe you. That’s what makes the riddle harder. You consider me of invaluable importance to the country? Hell, you consider me of invaluable importance even to your own necks. You sit there, trembling, because you know, that I’m the last one left to save your lives – and you know that time is as short as that. Yet you propose a plan to destroy me, a plan which demands, with an idiot’s crudeness, without loopholes, detours or escape, that I work at a loss – that I work, with every ton I pour costing me more than I’ll get for it – that I feed the last of my wealth away until we all starve together. That much irrationality is not possible to any man or any looter. For your own sake – never mind the country’s or mine – you must be counting on something. What?”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    “Sure,” said Rearden easily. “If it’s production that you want, then get out of the way, junk all of your damn regulations, let Orren Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel – and it will be pouring a thousand tons a day from every one of its sixty furnaces.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    Tinky Holloway: “But, Mr. Rearden, we don’t want to look at it that way. We don’t want to give you orders. We want your voluntary consent.”
    Rearden smiled. “I know it…. And you, brother,” said Rearden, “ know that that is the flaw in your game, the fatal flaw that will blast it sky-high.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    Rearden: “If you still want me to explain it, Mother,” he said very quietly, “if you’re still hoping that I won’t be cruel enough to name what you’re pretending not to know, then here’s what’s wrong with your idea of forgiveness. You regret that you’ve hurt me and, as your atonement for it, you ask that I offer myself to total immolation.”
    “Logic!” she screamed. “There you go again with your damn logic!”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years, 1 month ago
    “They [Rearden’s family] were throwing their pleas at a face that could not be reached. They did not know – and their panic was the last of their struggle to escape the knowledge – that his merciless sense of justice, which had been their only hold on him, which had made him take any punishment and give them the benefit of every doubt, was not turned against them – that the same force that had made him tolerant, was now the force that made him ruthless – that the justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.”
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