Revenge: it's a dream of flames fueled by scorched remains that are lit to a torch and brought back upon the one who burned you.
A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. __alue_ is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue_ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. __alue_ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value_ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.
Atlas Shrugged
Quote Detail
A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course of behavior. He needs a code of values to guide his actions. __alue_ is that which one acts to gain and keep, 'virtue_ is the action by which one gains and keeps it. __alue_ presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? 'Value_ presupposes a standard, a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative. Where there are no alternatives, no values are possible.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
When life is a horror....Don't look like a ghost!
Bill suited the action to the word, getting up and leaning over the handlebars and pumping the pedals at a lunatic rate. Looking at Bill's back, which was amazingly broad for a boy of eleven-going-on-twelve, watching it work under the duffel coat, the shoulders slanting first one way and then the other as he shifted his weight from one pedal to the other, Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable...they would live forever and ever.
This isn__ how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to be me. Not this.
An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.
Blame is the creed of the disempowered.