The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
– Gustave Flaubert
Category Archives: Quotes
Read: Anthem
To make my life a reason unto itself. I know what I want up to the age of two hundred. Know what you want in life and go after it. I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals, and I loathe humanity, for its failure to live up to these possibilities.” –Ayn Rand
Anthem, by Ayn Rand, is another work of fiction espousing her philosophy of objectivism, this time in novella form. It had been a while since I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged–both fantastic works (note: they are works of art, not just books). I picked up Anthem to expand my Rand repertoire and get a much needed injection of her thought process. Anthem was perfect for this. Quite Brave-New-World-esque, Anthem describes a future society that has forgotten the most sacred of all words–I. The book opens:
“The existed only to serve the state. They were conceived in controlled Palaces of Matinh. They diesd in the Home of the Useless. From cradle to grave, the crowd was one—the great WE. In all that was left of humanity there was only one man who dared to think, seek, love. He, Equality 7-2521, came close to losing his life because his knowledge was regarded as a treacherous blasphemy…he has rediscovered the lost and holy word—I.”
Anthem could either be a great introduction to Rand’s philosophy or a poignant reminder of the hundreds of hours your invested reading the above works. Regardless of your feelings on her philosophies, it is worth reading any of the books and exploring sides of society we probably don’t discuss enough.
Quotes from Anthem:
“The greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning atteach to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need no be examined, that the principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one’s eyes shut.”
“Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name.”
“We have come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will not bring us to the end of our quest. But we wish no end to our quest. We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to feel as if with each day out sight were growing sharper than the hawk’s and clearer than rock crystal.”
”And yet there is no shame in us and no regret. We say to ourselves that we are a wretch and a traitor. But we feel no burden upon our spirit and no fear in our heart. And it seems to us that our spirit is clear as a lake troubled by no eyes save those of the sun. And in our heart—strange are the ways of evil!—in our heart there is the first peace we have known in twenty years.”
”The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them.”
“So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!”
”There is no danger in solitude.”
”It is our world, a strange unknown world, but our own.”
“But we lived not, when we toiled for our brothers, we were only weary.”
“I AM. I THINK. I WILL.”
“I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”
“Whatever road I take, the guiding star is within me; the guiding star and the lodestone which point the way. They point in but one direction. They point to me.”
“I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happinesss is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”
“I guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.”
“I am neither friend nor foe to my brother, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brother must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my life without reason, not to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned.”
“I shall choose my friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.”
“[We] is the word by which the deprave steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages.”
“But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. This and nothing else.”
“What brought it to pass? What disaster took their reason away from men? What whip lashed them to their knees in shame and submission? The worship of the word “We.’ “
