Quotes / Atlas Shrugged

Quotes from Atlas Shrugged

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders – What would you tell him? ...To shrug."

— Francisco D'Anconia

"Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice."

— John Galt

"To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true."

— John Galt

"For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing – you who dread knowledge – I am the man who will now tell you. [...] I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

— John Galt. His entire speech can be found here.

"When the thugs of Europe’s People’s States snarl that you are guilty of intolerance, because you don’t treat your desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion-you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of any horror. When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells at you: How dare you be rich-you apologize and beg him to be patient and promise him you’ll give it all away."

— John Galt

Quotes about Atlas Shrugged

"I enjoy Atlas Shrugged quite a bit, and will re-read it every couple of years when I feel in the mood...That said, it's a totally ridiculous book which can be summed up as 'Sociopathic idealized nerds collapse society because they don't get enough hugs.'"

— John Scalzi, on his blog

Bert: Uh... have you read her? Rand. Atlas Shrugged. That's the one.
Don: Yes. Yes, it is.
Bert: See, I know you haven't read it. When you hit 40, you realize you've met or seen every kind of person there is, and I know what kind you are. Because I believe we are alike.
Don: I assume that's flattering.
Bert: By that I mean you are a productive and reasonable man, and in the end completely self-interested. It's strength. We are different—unsentimental about all the people who depend on our hard work.

— Mad Men, "The Hobo Code"

Officer Barbrady: At first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again.
Stan and Kyle: Hooray for Barbrady!

— South Park, "Chickenlover"

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

— John Rogers^note writer of Catwoman (2004) and Transformers (2007)

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

— Dorothy Parker^note This has also been attributed to a review of "The Cardinal's Mistress", by none other than Benito Mussolini.

"I didn't know they came out with a sequel for Atlas Shrugged already. Good on them.."

— Bob Hope is God, AV Club commentator, on The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence

"Dagny pulls rank and orders them to drive through the red light. This, in Rand's world, is the mark of a heroic and decisive capitalist, rather than the kind of person who in the real world would soon be the subject of headlines like '22 Dead in Train Collision Caused by Executive Who Didn't Want to Be Late For Meeting.'"

— Adam Lee "10 Things I Learned About the World from Ayn Rand's Insane "Atlas Shrugged'", AlterNet

"From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber — go!'"

— Whittaker Chambers in National Review, 1957

"I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'"

— Randall Munroe in the alt text for this xkcd strip, 2012

"Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' was published 61 years ago today, and since then has served as an excellent way to weed out potential romantic partners."

— Twitter comment from Literary Hub

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