Galt's Gulch

Atlas Shrugged, Part 3 Chapter 7: “This Is John Galt Speaking”

Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago to Books
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Summary: Hank Rearden joined the strike. Dagny was called in to Mr. Thompson’s broadcast on November 22. They observed technical difficulties. John Galt interrupted the broadcast. [To help you find them in your own book, quotes from Galt's speech are referenced by paragraph number.]

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 ago
    Galt 139: “A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness – nonexistence – as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw – the zero.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 135: “Whatever the value involved, it is your lack of it that gives you a claim upon those who don’t lack it. It is your need that gives you a claim to rewards. If you are able to satisfy your need, your ability annuls your right to satisfy it. But a need you are unable to satisfy gives you first right to the lives of mankind.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 127: “You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others – all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation: the good is the ‘non-good for me.’”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 110: “‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil. ‘Sacrifice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which you don’t.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 91: “The purpose of your struggle is not to know, not to grasp or name or hear the thing I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 85: “Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: ‘Your money or your life,’ or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind of your life’ – and neither is possible to man without the other.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 81: “So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate – do you hear me? no man may start – the use of physical force against others.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 79: “A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 55: “Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal is merely that negation of existence which is 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.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 54: “To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 50: “A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 37: “Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is the agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Galt 11: “We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 9 years ago
    Newspapers: “It is social treason to ascribe too much importance to Hank Rearden’s desertion and to undermine public morale by the old-fashioned belief that an individual can be of any significance to society.”
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