Atlas Shrugged Hank Rearden Quotes

I refuse to apologize for my ability—I refuse to apologize for my success—I refuse to apologize for my money.

Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts.

We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts, and reality to values.

Nothing can justify injustice.

They had counted on his pity and dreaded his anger; they had not dared consider the third alternative: his indifference.

There’s no way to make the irrational work.

There is no escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the universe, neither in matter nor in spirit—and if the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

...he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

If you believe that you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

...there can be no justification for a society in which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own murderers.

There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth... To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his... No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired... A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience.

But don’t I have any freedom of speech?” “In your own house. Not in mine.” “Don’t I have a right to my own ideas?” “At your own expense. Not at mine.” “Don’t you tolerate any differences of opinion?” “Not when I’m paying the bills.

Man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.

He, the man of violent energy and passionate ambition, the man of achievement, lighted by the flame of his success and flung into the midst of those pretentious ashes who called themselves an intellectual elite, the burned-out remnants of undigested culture, feeding on the afterglow of the minds of others, offering their denial of the mind as their only claim to distinction, and a craving to control the world as their only lust...

If you intend to keep your word, don’t talk about it, just do it.

When you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction.

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.

He saw, on their faces, that stubbornly evasive look...the look of a man cheating himself of his own consciousness.

Dagny, why is it that most women would never admit that, but you do?” “Because they’re never sure that they ought to be wanted. I am.” “I do admire self-confidence.” “Self-confidence was only one part of what I said, Hank.” “What’s the whole?” “Confidence of my value—and yours.

All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth.

Don’t try it.” “What?” “To win any battle when I set the terms.” She did not answer. She was struck by what the words made her feel; it was not an emotion, but a physical sensation of pleasure...

Are you saying,” he asked slowly, “that I rose in your estimation when you found that I wanted you?” “Of course.” “That’s not the reaction of most people to being wanted.” “It isn’t.” “Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.” “I feel that others live up to me, if they want me....

He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public—an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary.

I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.

He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things for which he could wish to be loved. He wondered what response they could hope to obtain from him in such manner—if his response was what they wanted.

Life...had been defined as motion; man’s life was purposeful motion; what was the state of a being to whom purpose and motion were denied, a being held in chains but left to breathe and to see all the magnificence of the possibilities he could have reached, left to scream “Why?” and to be shown the muzzle of a gun as sole explanation?

It was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone’s will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt—as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers.

He did not know that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to notice their disappointment.

He felt nothing for them now, nothing but the merciless zero of indifference, not even the regret of a loss.

He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

We lived by that which we held to be good and punished that which we held to be evil. You live by that which you denounce as evil and punish that which you know to be good.

The human shapes moving past him in the streets of the city were physical objects without any meaning.

He walked with an effortless speed, feeling relaxed by a form of activity that was natural to him.

The punishment she had wanted to inflict on him was the torture of shame; what she had inflicted was the torture of boredom.

I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers—with the facts, but not with the evaluation.

Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?” “Good God, no!” “Only that kind of man spends his life running after women.

He knew that the conference was a trap; he knew also that he was walking into it with nothing for any trappers to gain.

The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.

...they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us.

If, to him, love was a celebration of one’s self and of existence—then, to the self-haters and life-haters, the pursuit of destruction was the only form and equivalent of love.

Now he was contemplating, impersonally and for the first time, the real heart of terror: being delivered to destruction with one's hands tied behind one's back.

The hours ahead, like all her nights with him, would be added, she thought, to that savings account of one’s life where moments of time are stored in the pride of having been lived.

You’ve got to be kind...” “I’m not.” “You’ve got to have some pity.” “I haven’t.” “A good man knows how to forgive.” “I don’t.” “You wouldn’t want me to think that you’re selfish.” “I am.

I know that this stands for something.” “The dollar sign? For a great deal. It stands on the vest of every fat, piglike figure in every cartoon, for the purpose of denoting a crook, a grafter, a scoundrel—as the one sure-fire brand of evil. It stands—as the money of a free country—for achievement, for success, for ability, for man’s creative power—and, precisely for these reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy. It stands stamped on the forehead of a man like Hank Rearden, as a mark of damnation. Incidentally, do you know where that sign comes from? It stands for the initials of the United States.

The faces of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features, every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and all looking as if they were melting. Rearden’s face, with the sharp planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light.

Such was the code that the world had accepted and such was the key to the code: that it hooked man’s love of existence to a circuit of torture, so that only the man who had nothing to offer would have nothing to fear, so that the virtues which made life possible and the values which gave it meaning became the agents of its destruction, so that one’s best became the tool of one’s agony, and man’s life on earth became impractical.

Eddie, what do we care about people like him? We're driving an express, and they're riding on the roof, making a lot of noise about being leaders. Why should we care? We have enough power to carry them along – haven't we?

She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.

The road was dark, edged with trees. Looking up, he could see a few leaves against the stars; the leaves were twisted and dry, ready to fall. There were distant lights in the windows of houses scattered through the countryside; but the lights made the road seem lonelier. He never felt loneliness except when he was happy.

Thought—he told himself quietly—is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one’s purpose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being torn piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no way, no defense.

Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the sudden realization that nothing else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done; she needed no proofs, no questions, no explanations; a complex problem could rest safely on three syllables pronounced by a man who knew what he was saying.

She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth.

She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack of emotion: the hidden undertone of his manner was enjoyment. She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.

To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth . . . To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his . . . No, not Francisco d’Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired . . . A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience . . .

As businessman Hank Rearden philosophizes in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged: “People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked. . . . The man who lies to the world is the world’s slave from then on.

Her plain gray suit was like a thin coating of metal over a slender body against the spread of sun-flooded space and sky. Her posture had the lightness and unselfconscious precision of an arrogantly pure self-confidence. She was watching the work, her glance intent and purposeful, the glance of competence enjoying its own function. She looked as if this were her place, her moment and her world, she looked as if enjoyment were her natural state, her face was the living form of an active, living intelligence...

The proper attitude toward human activity and climate is expressed in the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Consider the following passage, where industrialist-philosopher Francisco d’Anconia remarks to steel magnate Hank Rearden how dangerous the climate is, absent massive industrial development. The conversation takes place indoors at an elegant party during a severe storm (in the era before all severe storms were blamed on fossil fuels). There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible. “It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny . . .” “What?” “You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . .” “You were?” “. . . only I didn’t have the words for it.” “Shall I tell you the rest of the words?” “Go ahead.” “You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.

...wondering how one went about forcing one’s mind into blankness, particularly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant, clearest, most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his foremost duty.

...he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane—that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won—that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself.

Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automatically.

The action of naming an issue instead of evading it, was so unlike the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden, startling relief...

...they seemed wounded by anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his being.

Watching Larkin’s efforts, Rearden felt what he did when he watched an ant struggling under the load of a matchstick. It’s so hard for him, thought Rearden, and so easy for me.

I like to deal with somebody who has no illusions about getting favors.

You always play it open, don’t you?” he asked. “I’ve never noticed you doing otherwise.” “I thought I was the only one who could afford to.

When he did not smile, his face looked inanimate, only his eyes remained alive, active with a cold, brilliant clarity of perception.

...there was no guilt in his face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence.

He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted.

He stood looking at her as if it took all of his effort to keep his eyes directed at her face, to keep seeing her, to endure the sight. “What do you want?” he asked.

The evaluation of an action as ‘practical,’ depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.

When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer.

He was seeing the full extent of her failure—in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him.

...this was the simple essence of his universe: the instantaneous refusal to submit to disaster, the irresistible drive to fight it, the triumphant feeling of his own ability to win.

He led her to the bedroom, he took off her clothes, without a word, in the manner of an owner undressing a person whose consent is not required. He clasped the pendant on her shoulders. She stood naked, the stone between her breasts, like a sparkling drop of blood.

..don’t worry about the goddamn bastards.” The two words sounded shockingly violent, because his face and voice remained calm.

...What are you laughing at?” “It’s wonderful.” “What?” “The way you don’t react as everybody else does nowadays.

Hank Rearden is the kind of man who sticks his name on everything he touches. You may, from this, form your own opinion about the character of Hank Rearden.

It was strange—she thought, in the days that followed, looking at the men around her—that catastrophe had made them aware of Hank Rearden with an intensity that his achievements had not aroused, as if the paths of their consciousness were open to disaster, but not to value. Some spoke of him in shrill curses—others whispered, with a look of guilt and terror, as if a nameless retribution were now to descend upon them—some tried, with hysterical evasiveness, to act as if nothing had happened. The newspapers, like puppets on tangled strings, were shouting with the same belligerence and on the same dates: “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.” “It is social treason to spread rumors about the disappearance of Hank Rearden, Mr. Rearden has not disappeared, he is in his office, running his mills, as usual, and there has been no trouble at Rearden Steel, except a minor disturbance, a private scuffle among some workers.” “It is social treason to cast an unpatriotic light upon the tragic loss of Hank Rearden, Mr. Rearden has not deserted, he was killed in an automobile accident on his way to work, and his grief-stricken family has insisted on a private funeral.

You have heard it said that I believe that this system has depravity as its motive, plunder as its goal, lies, fraud and force as its method, and destruction as its only result. You have also heard it said that, like Hank Rearden, I am a loyal supporter of this system and that I give my voluntary co-operation to present policies, such as Directive 10-289. I have come here to tell you the truth about it. “It is true that I share the stand with Hank Rearden. His political convictions are mine. You have heard him denounced in the past as a reactionary who opposed every step, measure, slogan and premise of the present system. Now you hear him praised as our greatest industrialist, whose judgment on the value of economic policies may safely be trusted. It is true. You may trust his judgment. If you are now beginning to fear that you are in the power of an irresponsible evil, that the country is collapsing and that you will soon be left to starve—consider the views of our ablest industrialist, who knows what conditions are necessary to make production possible and to permit a country to survive. Consider all that you know about his views. At such times as he was able to speak, you have heard him tell you that this government’s policies were leading you to enslavement and destruction. Yet he did not denounce the final climax of these policies—Directive 10-289. You have heard him fighting for his rights—his and yours—for his independence, for his property. Yet he did not fight Directive 10-289. He signed voluntarily, so you have been told, the Gift Certificate that surrendered Rearden Metal to his enemies. He signed the one paper which, by all of his previous record, you had expected him to fight to the death. What could this mean—you have constantly been told—unless it meant that even he recognized the necessity of Directive 10-289 and sacrificed his personal interests for the sake of the country? Judge his views by the motive of that action, you have constantly been told. And with this I agree unreservedly: judge his views by the motive of that action. And—for whatever value you attach to my opinion and to any warning I may give you—judge my views also by the motive of that action, because his convictions are mine.

He did not lift her, he let her cry, with his arm tight about her. She felt his hand on her head, on her shoulder, she felt the protection of his firmness, a firmness which seemed to tell her that as her tears were for both of them, so was his knowledge, that he knew her pain and felt it and understood, yet was able to witness it calmly—and his calm seemed to lift her burden, by granting her the right to break, here, at his feet, by telling her that he was able to carry what she could not carry any longer. She knew dimly that this was the real Hank Rearden, and no matter what form of insulting cruelty he had once given to their first nights together, no matter how often she had seemed as the stronger of the two, this had always been within him and at the root of their bond—this strength of his which would protect her if ever hers were gone. When she raised her head, he was smiling down at her. “Hank . . .” she whispered

Then, when the State Chief Executive of Minnesota sent a request to Washington for the assistance of the Army against the riots he was unable to control—three directives burst forth within two hours, stopping all trains in the country, commandeering all cars to speed to Minnesota. An order signed by Wesley Mouch demanded the immediate release of the freight cars held in the service of Kip’s Ma. But by that time, it was too late. Ma’s freight cars were in California, where the soybeans had been sent to a progressive concern made up of sociologists preaching the cult of Oriental austerity, and of businessmen formerly in the numbers racket. In Minnesota, farmers were setting fire to their own farms, they were demolishing grain elevators and the homes of county officials, they were fighting along the track of the railroad, some to tear it up, some to defend it with their lives—and, with no goal to reach save violence, they were dying in the streets of gutted towns and in the silent gullies of a roadless night. Then there was only the acrid stench of grain rotting in half-smoldering piles—a few columns of smoke rising from the plains, standing still in the air over blackened ruins—and, in an office in Pennsylvania, Hank Rearden sitting at his desk, looking at a list of men who had gone bankrupt; they were the manufacturers of farm equipment, who could not be paid and would not be able to pay him. The harvest of soybeans did not reach the markets of the country: it had been reaped prematurely, it was moldy and unfit for consumption.

On October 23, the Unification Board rejected the union’s petition, refusing to grant the raise. If any hearings had been held on the matter, Rearden had not known about it. He had not been consulted, informed or notified. He had waited, volunteering no questions. On October 25, the newspapers of the country, controlled by the same men who controlled the Board, began a campaign of commiseration with the workers of Rearden Steel. They printed stories about the refusal of the wage raise, omitting any mention of who had refused it or who held the exclusive legal power to refuse, as if counting on the public to forget legal technicalities under a barrage of stories implying that an employer was the natural cause of all miseries suffered by employees. They printed a story describing the hardships of the workers of Rearden Steel under the present rise in the cost of their living—next to a story describing Hank Rearden’s profits, of five years ago. They printed a story on the plight of a Rearden worker’s wife trudging from store to store in a hopeless quest for food—next to a story about a champagne bottle broken over somebody’s head at a drunken party given by an unnamed steel tycoon at a fashionable hotel; the steel tycoon had been Orren Boyle, but the story mentioned no names. “Inequalities still exist among us,” the newspapers were saying, “and cheat us of the benefits of our enlightened age.” “Privations have worn the nerves and temper of the people. The situation is reaching the danger point. We fear an outbreak of violence.” “We fear an outbreak of violence,” the newspapers kept repeating.

will, when he gets here. But, boy!—I’d work for him as a cinder sweeper. He’d blast through this valley like a rocket. He’d triple everybody’s production.” “Who’s that?” “Hank Rearden.

Ayn Rand carefully de-emphasized issues relating to political freedom—issues like representative government, separation of powers, and freedom of speech—in order to keep her focus on economic freedom and on the big philosophical issues about the role of reason and the morality of sacrifice. In effect, she did not want to imply that it would be acceptable to expropriate Hank Rearden, so long as the looters followed the right procedures for voting on it.

All of you welfare preachers—it’s not unearned money that you’re after. You want handouts, but of a different kind. I’m a gold-digger of the spirit, you said, because I look for value. Then you, the welfare preachers . . . it’s the spirit that you want to loot. I never thought and nobody ever told us how it could be thought of and what it would mean—the unearned in spirit. But that is what you want. You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration. You want unearned greatness. You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the necessity of being what he is. Without the necessity of being anything. Without . . . the necessity . . . of being.