Atlas Shrugged Science Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Volume.Chapter.Section.Page). We used the 50th Anniversary Edition published by Signet Books in 2007.

Quote #7

"Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, no now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive." (2.6.1.61)

The disastrous Directive targets business and science as the "enemy." Science is all about discovery, and change, which is of course what looters like James find terrifying.

Quote #8

"Our first rule here, Miss Taggart," he answered, "is that one must always see for oneself." (3.1.1.44)

Galt, and Akston later on, express a sort of Scientific Method view of life, emphasizing the need to gather evidence for oneself before making a judgments or forming hypotheses.

Quote #9

The farmhouse tore into strips of clapboard and went down, followed by a geyser of the bricks of its chimney..... It was so swift, so uncontested, so simple, that Dr. Stadler felt no horror, he felt nothing, it was not the reality he had known, it was the realm of a child's nightmare where material objects could be dissolved by means of a single malevolent wish. (3.3.1.68)

Project X is like something out of a science fiction nightmare. Stadler seems to want to deny its connection with science, comparing its effects to an evil wish or a nightmare. He doesn't want to acknowledge the evil that science can be used to perpetrate.