Most architects have read Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. That was the forerunner to Atlas Shrugged.
I have picked out some of the themes going on in the book. I do not believe in the way high society plays out in America. So, the author and I do have differences in thought and Value. However, those who think, produce, maintain our American and World ways do support the activities of human kind. They do deserve fair and just compensation. Each one of us need to decide what that effort is worth.
Again, I have selected and modified some of the comments within the book as they apply to my current thinking.
- It seems monstrously wrong to surrender, under any rules. I can neither give up nor go back. Who is to determine the fate of the world?
- Is it a moral crises, the greatest crises the world has ever faced and our last? Our age is the climax, of all the centuries.
- We kept mankind alive. Yet we allow humans to despise us and worship our destroyers. We allow some humans to destroy with their leadership of incompetence and brutality that destroys. Their leadership is not earned.
- Our virtue is human’s highest achievement, its highest moral purpose. Your love of virtue is your love of life. No level of effort is too great in the service of your Love.
- Who are the ones who create value and meaning?
- Learn to understand the nature of your own power. You create.
- One’s power of clarity is needed to produce a work of Art.
- Even the businessman can work under the guidance within the highest creative spirit.
- It does take an exceptional mind and still more exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the brain destroying influence of the world’s doctrines to remain human since human is the rational. We choose what we do. We chose society over self-interest, but can do it within our own interests.
- Perceived reality seems to be different of each person. How do we move forward? Only with the reality and with integrity!
- The right to win can be a State of Experience full of confidence, affirming self-dedication to the love of the right. Use your passion! The level of hell you are able to endure is the measure of your love.
- Never give up to a lesser standard no matter how long or hard it may be. The love within you will keep you going.
- Go with the purest clarity of mind with you struggles. Nothing will bar you from Atlantis. Carry your own chosen undeserved struggles.
- You do not need to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, strand on your own judgment and say it out loud.
- A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.
- All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is evil.
- Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is the purpose.
- Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
- Existence is Identity, consciousness is Identification.
- Reality is that which exists. The unreal does not exists. That abandons reason.
- Judgement is equal to your moral faculties.
- The rational process is a moral process. Devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality.
- Your soul or spirit is your consciousness. Free will is your minds freedom.
- Honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.
- Confidence is the practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.
- Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition that you choose to live.
- Your values define your character providing for self-value. A soul seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection.
- Life is the reward of virtue.
- Happiness is the goal and the reward for life.
- There is no guilt in rational goals. Your goals are earned by your own achievements.
- Others can see that your interests coincide with theirs. We are want prosperity.
- Give the benefit of doubt to those who seek to know.
- Pride is the sum of all virtues. Live!
- What are you doing to society? What have you done for your soul? This country is the product of reason.
- We choose- free to take our own risks and to bear our own loses, free to make our own profits.
- We are always one step away to the community on the frontier of man’s rebirth.
- Rise in the morning with the spirit you news as a child. That spirit of eagerness, adventure, and certainty comes from dealing with a rational universe.
- Do not let the fire go out. Spark by irreplaceable spark, keep it alight.
- We the joy of achievement, value, grandeur, goodness, that exists on Earth.
- Fill each other’s awareness as it is the sum of all knowledge. This is earned and set the stage for embodied values of your existence.
Again, I go back and forth with the words within the book and my take of the subject matter. This is a novel with great spirit and life direction. That is why it is such a great book. Not all will like the all the concepts but most of it still applies today. Where do you stand?
