Galt's Gulch

Atlas Shrugged, Part 3 Chapter 8: The Egoist

Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago to Books
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Summary: The pull peddlers react to John Galt’s speech, mostly with denial. Dr. Stadler wants to kill Galt, but Thompson wants to make a deal with him. Dagny visits with Eddie Willers. Society continues to crumble as the leaders search for John Galt, to no avail. Dagny sought John Galt and found him in his apartment. But she was followed, so she and Galt pretended to be strangers as the military men took him away. Mr. Thompson tries to make a deal with Galt, to no avail. Dr. Stadler meets with John Galt.

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Atlas Shrugged was written by Ayn Rand in 1957.

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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Dagny, thinking: “They hate him for being himself – she thought, feeling a touch of cold horror, as the nature of their souls became real to her – they hate him for his capacity to live. Do they want to live? – she thought in self-mockery.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Dr. Stadler to John Galt: “They’re mindless animals moved by irrational feelings – by their greedy, grasping, blind, unaccountable feelings! They seize whatever they want, that’s all they know: that they want it, regardless of cause, effect or logic – they want it, the bloody, grubbing pigs! … the mind? Don’t you know how futile it is, the mind, against those mindless hordes? Our weapons are so helplessly, laughably childish: truth, knowledge, reason, values, right! Force is all they know, force, fraud and plunder! … John! Don’t look at me like that!”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Dr. Stadler to John Galt, twenty-two years ago: “The only sacred value in the world, John, is the human mind, the inviolate human mind…”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Galt to Mr. Thompson: “The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer to not murder me is not a value.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Galt to Mr. Thompson: “You want me to be the Economic Dictator?”
    “Yes!”
    “And you’ll obey any order I give?”
    “Implicitly!”
    “Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”
    “Oh, no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. “We couldn’t do that! That’s … that’s not the field of production. That’s the field of distribution. How would we pay government employees?”
    “Fire your government employees.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Mr. Thompson to Galt: “Do you mean that you’re refusing my offer?”
    “I am.”
    “But why?”
    “It took me three hours on the radio to tell you why.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Mr. Thompson to Dagny: “But what are we to do? We can’t just quit and leave the country without any government at all. I shudder to think what would happen. With the kind of social elements now on the loose – why, Miss Taggart, it’s all I can do to keep them in line or we’d have plunder and bloody murder in broad daylight. I don’t know what’s got into people, but they just don’t seem to be civilized any more. We can’t quit at a time like this. We can neither quit nor run things any longer. What are we to do, Miss Taggart?”
    “Start decontrolling.”
    “Huh?”
    “Start lifting taxes and removing controls.”
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  • Posted by nsnelson 8 years, 5 months ago
    Mr. Thompson: “What are we to do? Can’t somebody tell us what to do?”
    “I can!”
    It was a woman’s voice, but it had the quality of the voice they had heard on the radio. They whirled to Dagny before she had time to step forward from the darkness beyond the group. As she stepped forward, her face frightened them – because it was devoid of fear.
    “I can,” she said, addressing Mr. Thompson. “You’re to give up.”
    “Give up?” he repeated blankly.
    “You’re through. Don’t you see that you’re through? What else do you need, after what you’ve heard? Give up and get out of the way. Leave men free to exist.”
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