“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?”“Yes.”“My dear fellow, who will let you?”“That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand

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“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”[Roark] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”


“My dear fellow, who will let you?""That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”


“It's not a question of who will allow me to do it, it's a question of who will stop me.”


“Who gave you the right to say all this?""You did.""Well, go on.""Do you wish the rest?""Go on.""I think it hurts you to know that you've made me suffer. You wish you hadn't. And yet there's something that frightens you more. The knowledge that I haven't suffered at all.""Go on.""The knowledge that I'm neither kind nor generous now, but simply indifferent. It frightens you, because you know that things like the Stoddard Temple always require payment--and you see that I'm not paying for it. You were astonished that I accepted this commission. Do you think my acceptance required courage? You needed far greater courage to hire me. You see, this is what I think of the Stoddard Temple. I'm through with it. You're not.”


“I don't believe it matters to me- that they're going to destroy it. Maybe it hurts so much that I don't even know I'm hurt. But I don't think so. If you want to carry it for my sake, don't carry more than I do. I'm not capable of suffering completely. I never have. It goes only down to a certain point and then it stops. As long as there is that untouched point, it's not really pain.Where does it stop?Where I can think of nothing and feel nothing except that I designed that temple. I built it. Nothing else can seem very important.You shouldn't have built it. You shouldn't have delivered it to the sort of thing they're doing.That doesn't mater. Not even that they'll destroy it. Only that it had existed.”


“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”