All 34 Uses of

preposterous
in
Atlas Shrugged

First, I don't think that Taggart Transcontinental will recover from its loss on that preposterous San Sebastian Line.†
Chpt 1.5

A battle against a thing such as that bill seemed preposterous and faintly embarrassing to him, as if he were suddenly asked to compete with a man who calculated steel mixtures by the formulas of numerology.†
Chpt 1.6

His only mark of distinction seemed to be a bulbous nose, a bit too large for the rest of him; his manner was meek, but it conveyed a preposterous hint, the hint of a threat deliberately kept furtive, yet intended to be recognized.†
Chpt 1.7

Then, preposterously, the first thing he said, his voice anxious, was, "But who will run Taggart Transcontinental in the meantime?"†
Chpt 1.7 *

Among the stories, there was one so preposterously out of character that Dagny believed it to be true: nothing in Mulligan's nature could have given anyone ground to invent it.†
Chpt 1.10

Through the blank seconds of recapturing her mind, she kept telling herself: You're hysterical ....don't be preposterous ....it's just a coincidence of names-while she knew, in certainty and numb, inexplicable terror, that this was the Hugh Akston.†
Chpt 1.10

It was preposterous, he thought, this growing intrusion of the accidents of nature into the affairs of men: it had never mattered before, if a winter happened to be unusually severe; if a flood washed out a section of railroad track, one did not spend two weeks eating canned vegetables; if an electric storm struck some power station, an establishment such as the State Science Institute was not left without electricity for five days.†
Chpt 2.1

By what right did you use my work to make an unwarranted, preposterous switch into another field, pull an inapplicable metaphor and draw a monstrous generalization out of what is merely a mathematical problem?†
Chpt 2.1

It's I who've produced that wealth and it's I who am going to let it buy for me every kind of pleasure I want-including the pleasure of seeing Row much I'm able to pay for-including the preposterous feat of turning you into a luxury object.†
Chpt 2.1

It's the most preposterous event of the season, and everybody's been looking forward to it for weeks, all my friends.†
Chpt 2.2

She remembered suddenly where she had seen as expert and preposterous a performance.†
Chpt 3.1

She could make no guess; none seemed to fit; she caught herself in the preposterous feeling of wishing that he had no profession at all, because any work seemed too dangerous for his incredible kind of beauty.†
Chpt 3.2

But the feeling seemed the more preposterous, because the lines of his face had the sort of hardness for which no danger on earth was a match, "No, Miss Taggart," he said suddenly, catching her glance, "you've never seen me before."†
Chpt 3.2

You looked preposterously out of place on a railroad platform-and it was not on a railroad platform that I was seeing you, I was seeing a setting that had never haunted me before-but then, suddenly, I knew that you did belong among the rails, the soot and the girders, that that was the proper setting for a flowing gown and naked shoulders and a face as alive as yours-a railroad platform, not a curtained apartment-you looked like a symbol of luxury and you belonged in the place that was its source-you seemed to bring wealth, grace, extravagance and the enjoyment of life back to their rightful owners, to the men who created railroads and factories-you had a look of energy and of its reward, to†
Chpt 3.2

When she turned her face to Dagny, the amusement was still there, but its shading was now different: it seemed to suggest that they shared a secret, which would make her presence here seem preposterous to the world, but self-evidently logical to the two of them.†
Chpt 3.3

It's perfectly preposterous," she said, in the tone of a challenge to the space at large.†
Chpt 3.4

And besides ....It's preposterous that I should have to think of it, but what am I going to live on?†
Chpt 3.4

Because you were a cheap, helpless, preposterous little guttersnipe, who'd never have a chance at anything to equal me!†
Chpt 3.4

Then she felt a stab of desolate loneliness, much wider a loneliness than the span of an empty streetand a stab of anger at herself, at the preposterous contrast between her appearance and the context of this night and age.†
Chpt 3.5

Then she remembered what she wore, and thought that it did look preposterous-and then, at the sudden stab of some violent impulse that felt like defiance and like loyalty to the full, real meaning of the moment, she threw her cape back and stood in the raw glare of light, under the sooted columns, like a figure at a formal reception, sternly erect, flaunting the luxury of naked arms, of glowing black satin, of a diamond flashing like a military cross.†
Chpt 3.5

He was seeing the progression of the years, the monstrous extortions, the impossible demands, the inexplicable victories of evil, the preposterous plans and unintelligible goals proclaimed in volumes of muddy philosophy, the desperate wonder of the victims who thought that some complex, malevolent wisdom was moving the powers destroying the world-and all of it had rested on one tenet behind the shifty eyes of the victors: he'll do something!†
Chpt 3.6

Her glance moved slowly down the line-up of his table: Mr. Thompson, Wesley Mouch, Chick Morrison, some generals, some members of the Legislature and, preposterously, Mr. Mowen chosen as a bribe to Galt, as a symbol of big business.†
Chpt 3.8

Definition:

absurd, outrageous, silly, or completely unreasonable