Quotes: Memoirs of a Geisha and Ayn Rand

Memoirs of a Geisha

Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron.

Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.

Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about.

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

"Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you."

What is sumo but a dance between giants? What is business but a dance between companies? I would like to know about every kind of dance.

At the temple, there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.


Random Ayn RAnd

Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.

To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'

So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.


The Fountainhead

It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own.

* Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love - because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone

"How do you always manage to decide?" - "How can you let others decide for you?" [Peter Keating and Howard Roark]

"We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is- for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breath air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself-and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must first know how to say the 'I'. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless. [...] You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can't help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you'll come back to me. They won't destroy me, Dominique. And they won't destroy you. You'll win, because you've chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I'll wait for you. I love you. I'm saying this now for all the years we'll have to wait. I love you, Dominique." [Howard Roark]

"It takes two to make a very great career: The man who is great, and the man-- almost rarer-- who is great enough to see greatness and say so." [Kent Lansing]

Atlast Shrugged
* His attitude was not 'I can do it better than you', but simply 'I can do it'.

* Two things were impossible to him: To stand still or to move aimlessly.

* He had never known fear, because against any disaster he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act.

Words are a lens to focus one's mind.