The Fountainhead

I have been asked whether I have changed in these past twenty-five years. No, I am the same—only more so. Have my ideas changed? No, my fundamental convictions, my view of life and of man, have never changed, from as far back as I can remember, but my knowledge of their applications has grown, in scope and in precision.

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment—a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger’s face seen in a bus—a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer were necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.

"Expression — of what? The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important — what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right — so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic — and only of addition at

"It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank

From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, 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."

He had always come back to her, suddenly, inexplicably, as he did tonight

thrust his chin out

"My dear fel‍­low, who will let you?"

"That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?"

He stood look‍­ing at her. She knew that he did not see her. No, she thought, it was not that ex‍­actly. He al‍­ways looked straight at people and his dam‍­nable eyes never missed a thing, it was only that he made people feel as if they did not exist. He just stood look‍­ing. He would not an‍­swer.

You're a self-centered monster, Howard. The more monstrous because you're utterly innocent about it.