“The trainmaster knew nothing about political philosophy; but he knew that that [i.e., “the people” didn’t want to hear about how Directive 10-289 led to the trainmaster’s brother’s suicide] had been the moment when he lost all concern for the life or death of any human being or of the country.”

“The road foreman…knew nothing about the philosophy of ethics; but he knew suddenly – not in words, but in the form of a dark, angry, savage pain – that if this [i.e., “self-immolation…the virtue of sacrificing to others that which was one’s dearest”] was virtue, then he wanted no part of it.”

“Dave Mitchum knew nothing about the philosophy of law; but he knew that when a court is not bound by any rules, it is not bound by any facts, and then a hearing is not an issue of justice, but an issue of men, and your fate depends not on what you have or have not done, but on whom you do or do not know.”

“Hell, yes!” said Kip Chalmers. “We’ve got so many rules regulations and controls that those bastards wouldn’t dare not to be safe!”

To Danneskjöld: Rearden smiled contemptuously. “Aren’t you one of those damn altruists who spends his time on a non-profit venture and risks his life merely to serve others?”
“No, Mr. Rearden. I am investing my time in my own future. When we are free and have to start rebuilding from out of the ruins, I want to see the world reborn as fast as possible….”
“Why?” whispered Rearden.
“Because my only love, the only value I care to live for, is that which has never been loved by the world, has never won recognition or friends or defenders: human ability. That is the love I am serving – and if I should lose my life, to what better purpose could I give it?”

Danneskjöld: “Are you thinking that death and taxes are our only certainty, Mr. Rearden? Well, there’s nothing I can do about the first, but if I lift the burden of the second, men might learn to see the connection between the two and what a longer, happier life they have the power to achieve. They might learn to hold, not death and taxes, but life and production as their two absolutes and as the base of their moral code.”

It’s a good point. There are numerous ways the Government “taxes” us, beyond obvious income taxes (and sales tax, and death tax, and etc.).

Danneskjöld to Rearden: “I cannot compute all the money that has been extorted from you – in hidden taxes, in regulations, in wasted time, in lost effort, in energy spent to overcome artificial obstacles…”

Danneskjöld: “What I actually am, Mr. Rearden, is a policeman. It is a policeman’s duty to protect men from criminals – criminals being those who seize wealth by force. It is the policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not the protection, but the plunder of property – then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.”

Danneskjöld to Rearden: “It is said that he [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant – while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”

This is another description of morality inverted.

Danneskjöld to Rearden: “I have seized every loot-carrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others. I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices – that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others – that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us – and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness.”

Danneskjöld: “The purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government.”

Danneskjöld to Rearden: “I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live it.”
“What man?”
“Robin Hood.”
Rearden looked at him blankly, not understanding.
“He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I’m the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich – or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.”

Danneskjöld: “Look more carefully, Mr. Rearden. There are only two modes of living left to us today: to be a looter who robs disarmed victims or to be a victim who works for the benefit of his own despoilers. I did not choose to be either.”
“You chose to live by means of force, like the rest of them.”
“Yes – openly. Honestly, if you will…Why should you be surprised, Mr. Rearden? I am merely complying with the system which my fellow men have established. If they believe that force is the proper means to deal with one another, I am giving them what they ask for.”

“He [Rearden] carried a gun in his pocket, as advised by the policemen of the radio car that patrolled the roads; they had warned him that no road was safe after dark, these days.”