The complete John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged | Hacker News Reader

The complete John Galt's speech from Atlas Shrugged

amberandchaos.com

TL; DR: "I spent close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold. And the gratitude I get... I'm tired of pretending I'm not special. You can't process me with a normal brain!"

-- Charlie Sheen

Check it.

I feel the plight of my philosophy teacher now, when he has to wade through oodles of lame philosophical BS every semester while grading papers :)

Instead of offering pointless invective why not provide at least one reason why you make this comment? Atlas Shrugged has sold six million copies. That's no argument for the thesis put forward in it but its impact on a fair number of thoughtful people over the last fifty years or so at least commands, don't you think, a reasoned comment in that you felt strongly enough to post your one liner?

Atlas Shrugged has sold six million copies.

How does that compare to Dianetics?

And Techcrunch still gets millions of page views a day. Quality by quantity is an odd concept.

"Everyone should look at..." doesn't follow from "a lot of people..."

Objectivism might be worth looking in to, but that doesn't mean this book (despite being the founding text) has merit.

Mein Kampf sold around ten million copies.

TL;DR; 70 pages of repeating the same thing that has been repeated 100 times in the previous 400 pages. That book could have been pamphlet.

After all of that Ayn Rand grows up and gets on Medicare and Social Security.

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149721/ayn_rand_railed_agai...

Did she pay into Medicare and SS? If so, she was only getting her money back. I don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand?

I'm staunchly opposed to medicare and SS but will I take them when I retire if they're still around? Hell yes, because I should at least get SOME of my money back.

Who needs principles when reality is so convenient?

can someone do a tl;dr?

Really? You really should read the whole thing. Even if you don't agree with it, the Galt speech will tell you all you need to know about the philosophy of objectivism. Agree with it or not, it's not something you should ignore. There are certain political movements that have hooked their wagons up to it and are riding off in to the sunset. That makes it, at least, relevant.

No one is going to read a novella-length speech unless they're already into the philosophy. Got a summary?

Sure: a is a.

That's an equation, not a philosophy. If Rand took a book to say that, she should have fired her editor.

It's a summary of objectivist philosophy, otherwise known as the "Law of Identity".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity

"With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, delivering a long speech (seventy pages in the first edition) serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, in the book's longest single chapter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Plot_summary

"Fuck you I got mine"

Who is John Galt's housekeeper?

Don't downvote, it's a valid question that shoots at the heart of the entire philosophy.

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