All 41 Uses of
acquire
in
Atlas Shrugged
- She was looking up at him, her glance acquiring some special quality of feminine appeal by being sent from under her lowered forehead up toward his full height; she asked, a little too casually and too cautiously, "The date I had in mind was December tenth, but would you prefer the ninth or the eleventh?"†
Chpt 1.2acquiring = obtaining (coming into possession of)
- She glanced at him slyly, and her voice acquired a livelier note when she drawled, "Jock Benson said that you have a soft snap on that railroad anyway, because it's your sister who runs the whole works.†
Chpt 1.4acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- He acquired his first title of property, with the aid of some inaccuracy about his age, on the day when he received his university diploma, and he sent them both to his father.†
Chpt 1.5
- The plea of his first smile had not been a plea of weakness; he had acquired an air of determination that seemed merciless.†
Chpt 1.5
- Having dealt with the clean reality of metals, technology, production all his life, he had acquired the conviction that one had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane-that one had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always won-that the senseless, the wrong, the monstrously unjust could not work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself.†
Chpt 1.6
- Her eyes had the look, acquired in open country, of being set for great distances.†
Chpt 1.8
- He paced the room sullenly, knowing that her eyes followed him, enjoying the knowledge, enjoying the sense of tremendous significance which his movements, his cuff links, his shoelaces, his lampshades and ashtrays acquired in that gentle, unquestioning glance.†
Chpt 1.9
- You don't know how this Mark Yonts happened to acquire the factory?†
Chpt 1.10 *
- How did you happen to acquire it?†
Chpt 1.10
- You won't like having to see them, Miss Taggart," said the chief of police of Durance, Louisiana; he was an elderly man with a slow, firm manner and a look of bitterness acquired not in blind resentment.†
Chpt 1.10acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- Those men who do not mind being practical enough to sell their brains for money, ought to acquire a little knowledge of the conditions of practical reality.†
Chpt 2.1
- He kept describing circles around Taggart, as if trying to acquire a suntan by means of an occasional ray, his wistful smile pleading to be noticed.†
Chpt 2.2
- His face looked tanned by a summer sun, and his eyes were the exact color of the sky on the kind of day when he had acquired his tan.†
Chpt 2.2acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause.†
Chpt 2.4
- But she saw lights in the windows of the cheap, garish structures that had acquired, within a few years, the slovenly dilapidation of slum hovels; the homes of people who had not moved, the people who never looked beyond the span of one week.†
Chpt 2.5acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.†
Chpt 2.7
- But the work of building a path was a living sum, so that no day was left to die behind her, but each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its immortality on every succeeding tomorrow.†
Chpt 2.8
- It was the only country in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only country whose money was the symbol of man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.†
Chpt 2.10
- She learned that she had torn the cartilage of two ribs, that she had sprained an ankle, ripped patches of skin off one knee and one elbow, and acquired a few bruises spread in purple blotches over her body.†
Chpt 3.1
- Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill?†
Chpt 3.1
- No matter what he knew about her, she thought, the only knowledge that could explain this, was a knowledge he had had no way of acquiring.†
Chpt 3.2acquiring = obtaining (coming into possession of)
- She left the few possessions she had acquired-her peasant skirt, a blouse, an apron, a few pieces of underwear-folded neatly in a drawer of the chest in her room.†
Chpt 3.2acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- Jim's face looked like a crumpled piece of paper, though its soft, puffed flesh had acquired no additional lines.†
Chpt 3.3
- They acted as if they hoped to gain, from the objects of gracious luxury, the power and the honor of which those objects had once been the product and symbol-they acted, she thought, like those savages who devour the corpse of an adversary in the hope of acquiring his strength and his virtue.†
Chpt 3.5acquiring = obtaining (coming into possession of)
- Then she was conscious of nothing but the sensations of her body, because her body acquired the sudden power to let her know her most complex values by direct perception.†
Chpt 3.5acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- Who had chosen to give its present tenants the means to acquire this room?†
Chpt 3.6
- Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two-existence and consciousness-are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you might acquire at its end.†
Chpt 3.7
- No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it.†
Chpt 3.7
- Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work ft done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others-that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human-that to cheat your way i†
Chpt 3.7acquiring = obtaining (coming into possession of)
- Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man's values, it has to be earned-that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character-that your character, your actions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises held by your mind-that as man must produce the physical values he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character that make his life worth sustaining-that as man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul-that to live requires a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no automatic sense of self-†
Chpt 3.7
- What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection?†
Chpt 3.7acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being.†
Chpt 3.7
- He was sentenced to experience desire-he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment.†
Chpt 3.7
- Whatever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights, if you acquire it by means of your virtue, your code does not regard it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice.†
Chpt 3.7
- Whatever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights, if you acquire it by means of your virtue, your code does not regard it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice.†
Chpt 3.7
- He has arrested his mind at the level of a baby's, at the stage when a consciousness acquires its initial sensory perceptions and has not learned to distinguish solid objects.†
Chpt 3.7acquires = obtains (comes into possession of)
- Your consciousness, they tell you, consists of 'reflexes,' 'reactions,' 'experiences,' 'urges,' and 'drives' —and refuse to identify the means by which they acquired that knowledge, to identify the act they are performing when they tell it or the act you are performing when you listen.†
Chpt 3.7acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels-and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.†
Chpt 3.7acquires = obtains (comes into possession of)
- In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.†
Chpt 3.7
- In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.†
Chpt 3.7acquired = obtained (came into possession of)
- No child is afraid of nature; it is your fear of men that will vanish, the fear that has stunted your soul, the fear you acquired in your early encounters with the incomprehensible, the unpredictable, the contradictory, the arbitrary, the hidden, the faked, the irrational in men.†
Chpt 3.7
Definition:
obtain (come into the possession of something)