John Galt's Speech, Atlas Shrugged, By Ayn Rand
"You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I - I am the man who has granted you your wish.
While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem - I beat you to it, I reached them first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the way to live by another morality - mine. It is mine that they chose to follow.
We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.
There is a difference between our strike and all those you've practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality - the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.
Are you now crying: No, this was not what you wanted? A mindless world of ruins was not your goal? You did not want us to leave you? You moral cannibals, I know that you've always known what it was that you wanted. But your game is up, because now we know it, too.
Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trail and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality - you who have never known any - but to discover it.
Whatever else they fought about, it was against man's mind that all your moralists have stood untied. It was man's mind that all their schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy. Now choose to perish or learn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.
The function of your stomach, lungs, heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not.
So that for you, who are human beings, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to' think or not to think.'"
~ John Galt's Complete Speech From Ayn Rand's - Atlas Shrugged found here
