Atlas Shrugged II

Some backup to yesterday’s review from the first half of the book …



“Francisco, what’s the most depraved type of human being?”

“The man without a purpose.”

(pg. 98)

* * * * *


“I can forgive all those others, they’re not vicious, they’re merely helpless. But you – you’re the kind who can’t be forgiven.”

“It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you.”

(pg. 142)

* * * * *


“Well, it’s like this, Miss Taggart,” said the delegate of the Union of Locomotive Engineers. “I don’t think we’re going to allow you to run that train.”

Dagny sat at her battered desk, against the blotched wall of her office. She said, without moving, “Get out of here.”

It was a sentence the man had never heard in the polished offices of railroad executives. He looked bewildered. “I came to tell you – ”

“If you have anything to say to me, start over again.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to allow me to do.”

(pgs. 216-217)

* * * * *


“Good day,” she said.

She had turned to go, when he said, his voice jerky and high, “You haven’t any right to despise me.”

She stopped to look at him. “I have expressed no opinion.”

“I am perfectly innocent, since I lost my money, since I lost all of my money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted nothing for myself. I’ve never sought anything for myself. Miss Taggart, I can proudly say that in all my life I have never made a profit!”

Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn.

“Mr. Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the statements a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.”

(pg. 292)

* * * * *


The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one’s life.

(pg. 343)

* * * * *


“Is that his excuse for himself? Is that what he’s made you feel?”

“No. Oh, no! That’s the feeling I lose when I speak to him. The strange thing is what he does make me feel.”

“What?”

“Hope.”

She nodded, in helpless wonder, knowing that she had felt it, too.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “But I look at people and they seem to be made of nothing but pain. He’s not. You’re not. That terrible hopelessness that’s all around us, I lose it only in his presence. And there. Nowhere else.”

(pg. 398)

* * * * *


“Mr. Reardon,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “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 this strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders – what would you tell him to do?”

“I … don’t know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?”

“To shrug.”

(pg. 424)


[all page numbers refer to the 35th anniversary paperback edition]