The Capacity To See, Connect, To Make What Had Not . .

"Whether it's a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes.

 - which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification

- which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before. 

That shinning vision which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and novels

- what do they think is the driving faculty of men who discovered how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric motor?

That sacred fire which is said to burn within musicians and poets

- what do they suppose moves an industrialist to defy the whole world for the sake of his new metal, as the inventors of the airplane, the builders of the railroads, the the discoverers of new germs or new continents have done through the ages?"

~ Composer and Pianist Richard Halley talking to Dagny in Galt's Gulch, Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged - page 728

~ Found at Speak Friend and Enter