All 50 Uses of
mystic
in
Atlas Shrugged
- It was all right for a disreputable mediocrity like Simon Pritchett to drool it as some sort of woozy mysticism-nobody listened to him.†
Chpt 2.1
- People with pleading eyes and desperate faces crowded into tents where evangelists cried in triumphant gloating that man was unable to cope with nature, that his science was a fraud, that his mind was a failure, that he was reaping punishment for the sin of pride, for his confidence in his own intellect-and that only faith in the power of mystic secrets could protect him from the fissure of a rail or from the blowout of the last tire on his last truck.†
Chpt 2.5
- Love was the key to the mystic secrets, they cried, love and selfless sacrifice to the needs of others.†
Chpt 2.5
- It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force-the mystics and the kings-the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-and the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a…†
Chpt 3.1
- It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idol of instinct and the idol of force-the mystics and the kings-the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted-and the kings, who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a…†
Chpt 3.1
- The first step of d'Anconia Copper, as of any other human value, has to come from here-because the rest of the earth has reached the consummation of the beliefs it has held through the ages: mystic faith, the supremacy of the irrational, which has but two monuments at the end of its course: the lunatic asylum and the graveyard…… Sebastian d'Anconia committed one error: he accepted a system which declared that the property he had earned by right, was to be his, not by right, but by…†
Chpt 3.2
- Dr. Stadler saw the little shyster's eyes studying him for the fraction of a second: the eyes had a touch of superstitious awe, as at the sight of a phenomenon from a mystical realm forever incomprehensible to Mr. Thompson-and they had the piercing, calculating shrewdness of a ward heeler who feels certain that nothing is immune from his standards, a glance like the visual equivalent of the words: What's your angle?†
Chpt 3.3
- I thought I could afford to ignore them-all those impotent mystics who prattle about their souls and are unable to build a roof over their heads.†
Chpt 3.3
- I had accepted, unwittingly and by default, the tenet that ideas were of no consequence to one's existence, to one's work, to reality, to this earth-as if ideas were not the province of reason, but of that mystic faith which I despised.†
Chpt 3.3
- I had cut myself in two, as the mystics preached, and I ran my business by one code of rules, but my own life by another.†
Chpt 3.3
- If some man like Hugh Akston had told me, when I started, that by accepting the mystics' theory of sex I was accepting the looters' theory of economics, I would have laughed in his face.†
Chpt 3.3
- "If you don't understand it, I can't explain," he said in the tone of a mystic who implies that a lack of understanding is the confession of a shameful inferiority.†
Chpt 3.4
- And yet there were men-and she knew it-who were able to obtain transportation whenever they wished, as by a mystic secret, as by the grace of some power which one was not to question or explain.†
Chpt 3.5
- They were the men whose dealings with Cuffy Meigs were regarded by people as that unknowable of mystic creeds which smites the observer for the sin of looking, so people kept their eyes closed, dreading, not ignorance, but knowledge.†
Chpt 3.5
- …their "instincts" as science, their cravings as knowledge, the goal of all the savages of the non-objective, the non-absolute, the relative, the tentative, the probable-the savages who, seeing a farmer gather a harvest, can consider it only as a mystic phenomenon unbound by the law of causality and created by the farmer's omnipotent whim, who then proceed to seize the farmer, to chain him, to deprive him of tools, of seeds, of water, of soil, to push him out on a barren rock and to…†
Chpt 3.5
- This age of misery is God's punishment to man for the sin of relying on his mind!" snarled the triumphant voices of mystics of every sect and sort, on street corners, in rain-soaked tents, in crumbling temples.†
Chpt 3.5
- His fear now seemed to have some much less mystic and much more practical quality.†
Chpt 3.6
- They, the impotent mystics, struggling to escape the responsibility of reason, had known that he, the rationalist, had undertaken to serve their whims.†
Chpt 3.6
- It was not the face itself that made him draw back in horror, but the professors, the philosophers, the moralists, the mystics who had released that face upon the world.†
Chpt 3.6
- You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being-not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement-not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason.†
Chpt 3.7
- Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystics, who pose as friends of humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to hold his own life as of no value.†
Chpt 3.7
- …is one's only judge of values and one's only guide of action-that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise-that a concession to the irrational invalidates one's consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality-that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind-that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one's consciousness.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they dread-a man of justice.†
Chpt 3.7
- It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him-it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.†
Chpt 3.7
- Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of ... a body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mystic revelations...
Chpt 3.7 *mystic = relating to realities that are outside of scientific understanding and normal experience
- As products of the split between man's soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness.†
Chpt 3.7
- As products of the split between man's soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness.†
Chpt 3.7
- The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive-a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society-a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God, Man's mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God, Man's mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith.†
Chpt 3.7
- Man's standard of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the pleasure of Society, whose standards are beyond man's right of judgment and must be obeyed as a primary absolute.†
Chpt 3.7
- His reward, say the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the grave.†
Chpt 3.7
- His reward, say the mystics of muscle, will be given on earth-to his great-grandchildren.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of both schools, who preach the creed of sacrifice, are germs that attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying on your mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of spirit declare that they possess an extra sense you lack: this special sixth sense consists of contradicting the whole of the knowledge of your five.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of muscle do not bother to assert any claim to extrasensory perception: they merely declare that your senses are not valid, and that their wisdom consists of perceiving your blindness by some manner of unspecified means.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of spirit call it 'another dimension,' which consists of denying dimensions.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of muscle call it 'the future,' which consists of denying the present.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit.†
Chpt 3.7
- The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit.†
Chpt 3.7
- No matter how eagerly you claim that the goal of your mystic wishing is a higher mode of life, the rebellion against identity is the wish for non-existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- Your teachers, the mystics of both schools, have reversed causality in their consciousness, then strive to reverse it in existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- Just as your mystics of spirit invented their heaven in the image of our earth, omitting our existence, and promised you rewards created by miracle out of non-matter-so your modern mystics of muscle omit our existence and promise you a heaven where matter shapes itself of its own causeless will into all the rewards desired by your non-mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- Just as your mystics of spirit invented their heaven in the image of our earth, omitting our existence, and promised you rewards created by miracle out of non-matter-so your modern mystics of muscle omit our existence and promise you a heaven where matter shapes itself of its own causeless will into all the rewards desired by your non-mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a protection racket-by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the sinners.†
Chpt 3.7
- …and to know the minute when a train will arrive after crossing the span of a continent, we are expected to continue running steel mills and to know the molecular structure of every drop of metal in the cables of your bridges and in the body of the airplanes that support you in mid-airwhile the tribes of your grotesque little mystics of muscle fight over the carcass of our world, gibbering in sounds of non-language that there are no principles, no absolutes, no knowledge, no mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- There is no knowledge, they teach, there's only faith: your belief that you exist is an act of faith, no more valid than another's faith in his right to kill you; the axioms of science are an act of faith, no more valid than a mystic's faith in revelations; the belief that electric light can be produced by a generator is an act of faith, no more valid than the belief that it can be produced by a rabbit's foot kissed under a stepladder on the first of the moon-truth is whatever people…†
Chpt 3.7
Definition:
-
(mystic) relating to realities that are outside of scientific understanding and normal experience; or one who attempts to tune into such realities