What. A. Book. I’ve always struggled with recommending people books. Thats why I share what I myself have read instead of telling others what to read. But this book has made that question so easy to answer. It is my number one go to book to reccomend to people. It’s empowering in it’s idea of individuality, and motivates you to follow your own way in life as opposed to conforming into something that deep down you know you are not.
Howard Roark is the main character, and exemplifies all the ideas that Rand is writing about perfectly. He would undoubtedly be the most independent person you have ever met, if you were so lucky.
The essential essence of the book is around moving society forward through individuals making completely self interested decisions about the way they think the world should be. In this case it is Roark and his modernist style of architecture. It mocks what Rand calls the ‘second handers’ that simply mirror the opinions of others and follow the crowd.
Don’t be a second hander.
Highlights
“It’s for four years. But, on the other hand, Guy Francon offered me a job with him some time ago. Today he said it’s still open. And I don’t know which to take.” Roark looked at him; Roark’s fingers moved in slow rotation, beating
against the steps. “If you want my advice, Peter,” he said at last, “you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?” “You see, that’s what I admire about you, Howard. You always
know.”
“Drop the compliments.”
“But I mean it. How do you always manage to decide?” “How can you let others decide for you?”
“But you see, I’m not sure, Howard. I’m never sure of myself. I don’t know whether I’m as good as they all tell me I am. I wouldn’t admit that to anyone but you. I think it’s because you’re always so sure that
I…” “Petey!” Mrs. Keating’s voice exploded behind them. “Petey, sweet- heart! What are you doing there?”
She stood in the doorway, in her best dress of burgundy taffeta, happy
and angry.
“And here I’ve been sitting all alone, waiting for you! What on earth are you doing on those filthy steps in your dress suit? Get up this minute! Come on in the house, boys. I’ve got hot chocolate and cookies ready for you.”
“But, Mother, I wanted to speak to Howard about something impor- tant,” said Keating. But he rose to his feet.
She seemed not to have heard. She walked into the house. Keating followed.
Roark looked after them, shrugged, rose and went in also.
Mrs. Keating settled down in an armchair, her stiff skirt crackling. “Well?” she asked. “What were you two discussing out there?”
Keating fingered an ash tray, picked up a matchbox and dropped it, then, ignoring her, turned to Roark.
“Look, Howard, drop the pose,” he said, his voice high. “Shall I junk the scholarship and go to work, or let Francon wait and grab the Beaux- Arts to impress the yokels? What do you think?”
Something was gone. The one moment was lost.
It was right and it was good, that house growing under his hand, because men were still worshiping the masters who had done it before him. He did not have to wonder, to fear or to take chances; it had been done for him.
“You call that freedom?”
“To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.” “What if you found something you wanted?”
“I won’t find it. I won’t choose to see it. It would be part of that lovely world of yours. I’d have to share it with all the rest of you-and I wouldn’t. You know, I never open again any great book I’ve read and loved. It hurts me to think of the other eyes that have read it and of what they were. Things like that can’t be shared. Not with people like that.”
There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read;
“Don’t you know that most people take most things because that’s what’s given them, and they have no opinion whatever? Do you wish to be guided by what they expect you to think they think or by your own judgment?”
Keating let himself be carried by the torrent. He needed the people and the clamor around him. There were no questions and no doubts when he stood on a platform over a sea of faces; the air was heavy, compact, saturated with a single solvent-admiration; there was no room for anything else. He was great; great as the number of people who told him so. He was right; right as the number of people who believed it. He looked at the faces, at the eyes; he saw himself born in them, he saw himself being granted the gift of life. That was Peter Keating, that, the reflection in those staring pupils, and his body was only its reflection.
“It is so commonplace,” she drawled, “to be understood by every- body.”
What is kinder-to believe the best of people and burden them with a nobility beyond their endurance or to see them as they are, and accept it because it makes them comfortable? Kindness being more important than justice, of course.”
“It’s good to suffer. Don’t complain. Bear, bow, accept-and be grateful that God has made you suffer. For this makes you better than the people who are laughing and happy. If you don’t understand this, don’t try to understand. Everything bad comes from the mind, because the mind asks too many questions. It is blessed to believe, not to under- stand. So if you didn’t get passing grades, be glad of it. It means that you are better than the smart boys who think too much and too easily.”
And as Roark looked at him, he added: “Don’t worry. They’re all against me. But I have one advantage: they don’t know what they want.
I do.”
“That’s true,” whispered Keating. He would not have admitted it to anyone else.
“You missed the beautiful pride of utter selflessness. Only when you learn to deny your ego, completely, only when you learn to be amused by such piddling sentimentalities as your little sex urges-only then will achieve the greatness which I have always expected of you.”
you “You… you believe that about me, Ellsworth? You really do?”
“I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t. But to come back to love.
“Yes, if it’s your chief concern. Don’t you see how egotistical it is? To
hell with everybody so long as I’m virtuous.”
He recognized nothing but the accuracy of his own judgment.
There was no order in his read- ing; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.
Wynand showed no interest in the previous standing of his prey. He showed no interest in men of glittering success who had commercialized their careers and held no particular beliefs of any kind. His victims had a single attribute in common: their immacu- late integrity.
But you have to flatter people whom you despise in order to impress other people who despise you.”
“I’d rather…” Then he cried: “I’d rather you’d express an opinion,
God damn it, just once!” She asked, in the same level monotone: “Whose opinion, Peter? Gor- don Prescott’s? Ralston Holcombe’s? Ellsworth Toohey’s?”
“You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer? You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act-a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn’t like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn’t want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I be- lieved. My real soul, Peter? It’s real only when it’s independent-you’ve discovered that, haven’t you? It’s real only when it chooses curtains and desserts you’re right about that-curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you’ve never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflec- tions and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being-only without the trimmings. I didn’t go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment-I said I had no judgment. I didn’t borrow de- signs to hide my creative impotence-I created nothing. I didn’t say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind-I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death-I’ve imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you- you haven’t done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You’ve spared them the blank death. Because you’ve imposed it-on yourself.”
He said nothing. She walked away from him, and sat down again, waiting.
Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeat- able.”
“It is a masterpiece,” said Jules Fougler. “I hope you will prove yourself worthy of it, Peter. It is the kind of play that depends upon what the members of the audience are capable of bringing with them into the theater. If you are one of those literal-minded people, with a dry soul and a limited imagination, it is not for you. But if you are a real human being with a big, big heart full of laughter, who has preserved the uncorrupted capacity of his childhood for pure emotion-you will find it an unforgettable experience.”
Many stole Cameron’s forms; few understood his thinking.
I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride: that now, thinking of the end, I do not cry like all the men of my age: but what was the use and the meaning? I was the use and the meaning, I, Gail Wynand. That I lived and that I acted.
“Howard, I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life. You de- signed my best projects at Stanton. You designed the first house I ever built. You designed the Cosmo-Slotnick Building. I have fed on you and on all the men like you who lived before we were born. The men who designed the Parthenon, the Gothic cathedrals, the first skyscrapers. If they hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have known how to put stone on stone. In the whole of my life, I haven’t added a new doorknob to what men have done before me. I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing in return. I had nothing to give. This is not an act, Howard, and I’m very conscious of what I’m saying. And I came here to ask you to save me again. If you wish to throw me out, do it now.”
“Howard – anything you ask. Anything. I’d sell my soul …”
“That’s the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that is much harder?”
Both are only the means of my work. Peter, before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity. I’ll be glad if people who need it find a better manner of living in a house I designed. But that’s not the motive of my work. Nor my reason. Nor my reward.”
The only thing that matters, my goal, my reward, my beginning, my end is the work itself. My work done my way.
“You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the
money. You’ll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I-I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cort- landt.”
I never think of myself in relation to anyone else.
“I’ve 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. Oth- ers 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.”
“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 great important – the realm of values, of judgement, of spirit, of thought – they place others abve self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesnt need it”
…
“That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They dont ask ‘Is this true?’ They ask ‘Is this what others think is true?’ Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egotists. You dont think through anothers brain and you dont work through anothers hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgement, you suspent consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation. Anchored to nothing”
If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion-prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me.’ Then he wonders why he’s unhappy. Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched.
A self-sufficient ego.
“We have never made an effort to understand what is greatness in man and how to recognize it,” said another Wynand editorial. “We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice, we drool, is the ultimate virtue. Let’s stop and think for a moment. Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convic- tions? The honesty of his feeling? The independence of his thought? But these are a man’s supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is pre- cisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacri- ficed self that we must respect in man above all.”
Toohey – “The world I want. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought in the brain of his neigh- bor who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought-and so on, Peter, around the globe. Since all must agree with all. A world where no man will hold a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of his neighbor who’ll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who’ll have no desires-around the globe, Peter. Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for that headless monster-prestige. ”
Every single thing I told you? Isn’t Europe swallowed already and we’re stumbling on to follow? Everything I said is contained in a single word collectivism. And isn’t that the god of our century? To act together. To think- together. To feel-together. To unite, to agree, to obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer-first. But then-unite and rule.
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness. Alvah Scarret can be forgiven. He had nothing to betray. Mitchell Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a second-hander.
The misery of knowing how strong and able one is in one’s own mind, the radiant picture never to be made real. Dreams? Self-delusion? Or a murdered reality, unborn, killed by that corroding emotion without name – fear – need – dependence – hatred?
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received-hatred. The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors- stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced.
“And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.
“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons-a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstrac- tion, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man-the function of his reasoning mind.
“But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary conse- quence. The primary act-the process of reason-must be performed by each man alone. We can divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach. No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.
And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways-by the independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others.
“Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Inde- pendence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.
…
“The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, pro- vided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative faculty, his thinking, his work. But it
does not include the sphere of the gangster, the altruist and the dictator. “A man thinks and works alone.
Roark – “I do not recognise anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy”