Rules for creators

If you are in the habit/business/ profession of creating, the following lines from 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand may be of help.

Disclaimer : please replace 'man' with person. The following were how Ayn wrote them in 1943.

You've gone beyond the probable and made us see the possible, but possible only through you. Because your figures are more devoid of contempt of humanity than any work I’ve ever seen. . . . I came for a simple, selfish reason . . . to seek the best.

Howard, I’m a parasite. I’ve been a parasite all my life . . . I have fed on you and all the men like you who lived before we were born. . . . if they hadn’t existed I wouldn’t have known how to put stone to stone. . . . I have taken that which was not mine and given nothing in return.

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”

“You have been the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated”

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”

“It's easy to run to others. It's so hard to stand on one's own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can't fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It's easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It's simple to seek substitutes for competence--such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”

“Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?"
Yes."
My dear fellow, who will let you?"
That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

“Never ask people about your work.”

“I don't wish to be the symbol of anything. I'm only myself.”