Thomas's Top Ten Scenes from

Atlas Shrugged

These are my favorite scenes from my favorite novel--Atlas Shrugged (by Ayn Rand).

For an excerpt from the novel: Dagny's opening scene. For more information regarding the novels of Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand's Fiction.

1) Galt & Dagny in the tunnel

"'. . . it was you, all my life, through everything I did
and everything I wanted . . .'" (Dagny to Galt)

[Part 3, Ch. VIII ("The Egoist")]

2) The dinner party at Mulligan's in the Valley (on Dagny's first evening in the Valley)

"'And if you met those great men in heaven,
what would you want to say to them?'"
(Danagger to Dagny)

[Part 3, Ch. I ("Atlantis")]

3) Dagny visits Galt's Manhattan apartment

"...the poise of her shoulders, the lift of her head and the
solemnly exultant certainty that in the moment of ultimate
decision, it was not the disaster she expected of her life,
at the end of a rising stairway she needed thirty-seven years
to climb."

[Part 3, Ch. VIII ("The Egoist")]

4) Dagny wakes to see Galt just after her crash in the valley

"...a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt."

[ Part 3, Ch. I ("Atlantis") ]

5) The final minutes (pages) of Galt's speech

"'The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it
is possible, it's yours.'"

[ Part 3, Ch. VII ("This is John Galt Speaking" ]

6) Galt converses with the nation's top bureaucrats at the Wayne-Falkland hotel

"'Did they feel any pity for Hank Rearden?'"

[ Part 3, Ch. VIII ("The Egoist") ]

7) Francisco & the others enter the SSI torture room to find Galt; also, the plane ride back to the valley

"Then they lay still, leaning back in their chairs, silently
looking at each other. Then their persons filled each other's
awareness, as the sum and meaning of the future..."

[ Part 3, Ch. X ("In the Name of the Best Within Us") ]

8) Francisco talks to Dagny at her cabin in the woods

"'...you and I were the kind who determine the fate of the
world. If this is what we let it come to, then it must have
been our own guilt...'"
"'Yes, Dagny, it was our own guilt.'"
"'Because we didn't work hard enough?'"
"'Because we worked too hard--and charged too little.'"

[ Part 2, Ch. VIII ("By Our Love") ]

9) Hank confesses his love (and his guilt) to Dagny (just after her radio speech about her & Hank's affair)

"I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the
same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my
Metal, my hours at a desk...as I love the things I've made and
the things I felt...as the wife I've never had..."

[ Part 3, Ch. III ("Anti-Greed") ]

10) Eddie Willers elects to remain with the abandonned train

"Dagny!--he was crying to a twelve-year-old girl in a sunlit
clearing of the woods--in the name of the best within us, I
must now start this train!"

[ Part 3, Ch. X ("In the Name of the Best Within Us") ]

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Enlightenment is selfish. Enlighten yourself.