All 39 Uses of
creed
in
Atlas Shrugged
- He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had the right to stop him.†
Chpt 1.3 *
- He had never held that creed, but he had accepted it as natural that his family should hold it.†
Chpt 1.6
- No, you'd never accept any part of their vicious creed.†
Chpt 2.4
- The nation which had once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production, is now told that it is achieved by squalor," said Francisco d'Anconia in a press interview.†
Chpt 2.5
- But whether this had been Boyle's motive or whether it had been the principle of sacrifice, no one could tell and it made no difference: if Boyle had been a saint of the creed of selflessness, he would have had to do precisely what he had done.†
Chpt 2.5
- If they believe that the purpose of my life is to serve them, let them try to enforce their creed.†
Chpt 2.7
- The despoiling of reason has been the motive of every anti-reason creed on earth.†
Chpt 3.1
- The despoiling of ability has been the purpose of every creed that preached self-sacrifice.†
Chpt 3.1
- And, once and for all, they will learn the meaning of their creed.†
Chpt 3.1
- That creed has lasted for centuries solely by the sanction of the victims-by means of the victims' acceptance of punishment for breaking a code impossible to practice.†
Chpt 3.1
- He saw her looking at him, her glance half-question, half-hope, and he added, "When the creed of self-immolation has run, for once, its undisguised course-when men find no victims ready to obstruct the path of justice and to deflect the fall of retribution on themselveswhen the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not willing any longer-when men see that neither their hearts nor their muscles…†
Chpt 3.1
- I, who thought that I was fighting them, I had accepted the worst of our enemies' creed-and that is what I've paid for ever since, as I am paying now and as I must.†
Chpt 3.3
- I rebelled against their creed of human impotence and I took pride in my ability to think, to act, to work for the satisfaction of my desires.†
Chpt 3.3
- I rebelled against the creed that virtue is some disembodied unknowable of the spirit-but I damned you, you, my dearest one, for the desire of your body and mine.†
Chpt 3.3
- Now she knew that they were not exceptions, that theirs was the code accepted by the world, that it was a creed of living, known by all, but kept unnamed, leering at her from people's eyes in that sly, guilty look she had never been able to understand-and at the root of the creed, hidden by silence, lying in wait for her in the cellars of the city and in the cellars of their souls, there was a thing with which one could not live.†
Chpt 3.4
- Now she knew that they were not exceptions, that theirs was the code accepted by the world, that it was a creed of living, known by all, but kept unnamed, leering at her from people's eyes in that sly, guilty look she had never been able to understand-and at the root of the creed, hidden by silence, lying in wait for her in the cellars of the city and in the cellars of their souls, there was a thing with which one could not live.†
Chpt 3.4
- No, she thought, they're not evil, not all people …. they're only their own first victims, but they all believe in Jim's creed, and I can't deal with them, once I know it …. and if I spoke to them, they would try to grant me their good will, but I'd know what it is that they hold as the good and I would see death staring out of their eyes.†
Chpt 3.4
- She could not smash it with her fists, she could not batter one by one all the posts of the street stretching off beyond eyesight-as she could not smash that creed from the souls of the men she would encounter, one by one.†
Chpt 3.4
- 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
- There was no reason to feel more revulsion than usual, she thought; he had merely uttered the things which were preached, heard and accepted everywhere; but this creed was usually expounded in the third person, and Jim had had the open effrontery to expound it in the first.†
Chpt 3.5
- There, he thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, nonproperty, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another.†
Chpt 3.6
- There, he thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, nonproperty, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another.†
Chpt 3.6
- We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties.†
Chpt 3.7
- …matter and spirit, a soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection, valuing nothing higher than itself-and that the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul's shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.†
Chpt 3.7
- The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral-a morality that declares its own bankruptcy by confessing that it can't impart to men any personal stake in virtues or values, and that their souls are sewers of depravity, which they must be taught to sacrifice.†
Chpt 3.7
- It is your mind that they want you to surrender-all those who preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives, whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body, whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach on this earth.†
Chpt 3.7
- Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral to live by the effort of others-it is immoral to consume your own product, but moral to consume the products of others-it is immoral to earn, but moral to mooch-it is the parasites who are the moral justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of the parasites is an end in itself-it is evil to profit by achievement, but good to profit…†
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
- There is no honest revolt against reason-and when you accept any part of their creed, your motive is to get away with something your reason would not permit you to attempt.†
Chpt 3.7
- Those irrational wishes that draw you to their creed, those emotions you worship as an idol, on whose altar you sacrifice the earth, that dark, incoherent passion within you, which you take as the voice of God or of your glands, is nothing more than the corpse of your mind.†
Chpt 3.7
- We, the men of the mind, were the unnamed victims of their creed, we who were willing to break their moral code and to bear damnation for the sin of reason-we who thought and acted, while they wished and prayed-we who were moral outcasts, we who were bootleggers of life when life was held to be a crime-while they basked in moral glory for the virtue of surpassing material greed and of distributing in selfless charity the material goods produced by-blank-out.†
Chpt 3.7
- Identify the development of a human consciousness-and you will know the purpose of their creed.†
Chpt 3.7
- You are now seeing the climax of the creed of the uncaused and unearned.†
Chpt 3.7
- Destruction is the only end that the mystics' creed has ever achieved, as it is the only end that you see them achieving today, and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them question their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to…†
Chpt 3.7
- We, who were the living buffers between you and the nature of your creed, are no longer there to save you from the effects of your chosen beliefs.†
Chpt 3.7
- No matter what dishonorable compromise you've made with your impracticable creed, no matter what miserable balance, half-cynicism, half-superstition, you now manage to maintain, you still preserve the root, the lethal tenet: the belief that the moral and the practical are opposites.†
Chpt 3.7
- And in that fog of switching definitions which descends upon a frozen mind, you have forgotten that the evils damned by your creed were the virtues required for living, and you have come to believe that actual evils are the practical means of existence.†
Chpt 3.7
- No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction.†
Chpt 3.7
- How many corpses do you intend to pile up before you renounce it-your guns, your power, your controls and the whole of your miserable altruistic creed?†
Chpt 3.8
Definition:
-
(creed) any system of principles or beliefs