I’m still pulling straight from Galt’s main speech… too much good stuff not too. I’ll probably venture out into the rest of the book on the thread started by our Fox in the Spirituality forum…
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.
Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness — to value the failure of your values — is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal (941) seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man — every man — is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.