The Fountainhead

%% ts: 2026-05-04T20:16:36Z %% "This is not the place for a dissertation on the nature of Romantic fiction, so let me state-for the record and for the benefit of those college students who have never been allowed to discover it—only that Romanticism is the conceptual school of art. It deals, not with the random trivia of the day, but with the timeless, fundamental, uni- versal problems and values of human existence. It does not record or photograph; it creates and projects. It is concerned—in the words of Aristotle-not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be." (04-05-2026)

• On romanticism

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%% template_uid: 0DA3F918-CB0A-46F3-9037-CE332E175F06 ts: 2026-05-05T20:12:51Z %% "He did not know why her presence made him confess things unconfessed in his own mind. He did not know why the victory he came here to share had faded. But it did not matter." (p. 49 | 05-05-2026)

• This is a kind of love I like.

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%% template_uid: 6W6rvs0X ts: 2026-05-17T08:14:04Z %% "Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject. He branched out erratically in all directions; he read volumes of specialized erudition first, and high-school primers afterward. There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind." (p. 419 | 17-05-2026) %%end%%

%% template_uid: 6W6rvs0X ts: 2026-05-17T15:10:06Z %% "One day he noticed the brilliant work of a young reporter on another paper and sent for him. The boy came, but the salary Wynand mentioned had no effect on him. "I can't work for you, Mr. Wynand," he said with desperate earnestness, "because you ... you have no ideals." Wynand's thin lips smiled. " You can't escape human depravity, kid," he said gently. " The boss you work for may have ideals, but he has to beg money and take orders from many contemptible people. I have no ideals but I don't beg. Take your choice. There's no other." The boy went back to his paper. A year later he came to Wynand and asked if his offer were still open. Wynand said that it was. The boy had remained on the Banner ever since. He was the only one on the staff who loved Gail Wynand" (p. 427 | 17-05-2026) %%end%%

%% template_uid: 6W6rvs0X ts: 2026-05-17T15:11:23Z %% "Alvah Scarret had never hated anything, and so was incapable of love." (p. 427 | 17-05-2026) %%end%%

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• Predikt Rand voor de parochie van de antisocialen? The antisocial shall inherit the world?

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%% ts: 2026-05-24T17:18:03Z %% "What else can one do if one must serve the people? If one must live for others? Either pander to everybody's wishes and be called corrupt; or impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybody's good. Can you think of any other way?"" (p. 632 | 24-05-2026) %%end%%

%% ts: 2026-05-24T17:21:09Z %% "Look at Peter Keating." You look at him. I hate his guts." "Ive looked at him—at what's left of him-and it's helped me to understand. He's paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he's been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but to be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from others in order to make an impression on others. There's your actual selflessness. It's his ego that he's betrayed and given up. But everybody calls him selfish" (p. 633 | 24-05-2026) %%end%%

%% ts: 2026-05-24T17:22:45Z %% "Aren't they all acting on a selfish motive-to be noticed, liked, admired?" by others. At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance—the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought—they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn't" (p. 634 | 24-05-2026) %%end%%

%% ts: 2026-05-24T18:08:01Z %% "When Keating invoked his contract, he was told: "All right, go ahead, try to sue the government. Try it." At times, he felt a desire to kill. There was no one to kill. Had he been granted the privilege, he could not have chosen a victim. Nobody was responsible. There was no purpose and no cause. It had just happened." (p. 639 | 24-05-2026) %%end%%

%% ts: 2026-05-24T19:29:20Z %% "Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue—and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can't practice. But one can't be good halfway or honest approximately" (p. 665 | 24-05-2026)

• On how to destroy men

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%% ts: 2026-05-24T20:58:02Z %% "A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends." (p. 691 | 24-05-2026)

• The owner must have a good reason to keep something on a leash

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