All 34 Uses of

crucial
in
Atlas Shrugged

"When we think of the natural resources, at a time of critical shortage," Boyle said softly, "when we think of the crucial raw materials that are being wasted on an irresponsible private experiment, when we think of the ore ...."†
Chpt 1.3

crucial = very important

For the flash of one instant, she thought that here, before her, in James Taggart and in that which made him smile, was a secret she had never suspected, and it was crucially important that she learn to understand it.†
Chpt 1.4

She did not know why she had to win; she did not know why it seemed so crucially, urgently necessary; she knew only that she had to and that she would.†
Chpt 1.5

She had seen them together and she had approached, drawn by an impulse she could not explain or resist; it seemed crucially important that she know what these two men said to each other.†
Chpt 1.6

He did not think of what it was that must not stop him, or why this sentence was such a crucial absolute.†
Chpt 1.7 *

crucial = very important

The interview was devoted to the subject of the grave social responsibility of metallurgists, stressing the fact that metal performed so many crucial tasks where human lives depended on its quality.†
Chpt 1.8

crucial = very important

It was a net of connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their wires and circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which had fashioned any one part of them for the first time.†
Chpt 1.8

At such a moment, when crucial issues hang in the balance, you choose to waste your time on looking for some one employee?†
Chpt 1.10

But I should like to speak to him on a matter of business of crucial importance.†
Chpt 1.10

So are Mr. Balch of the Emergency Commission, Mr. Anderson of Crucial Supplies and Mr. Pettibone of Consumers' Protection.†
Chpt 2.1

crucial = very important

It's so wonderful to see a great, new, crucial idea which is not mine!†
Chpt 2.1

He had added, in the monotone of reciting some impersonal, statistical report, "The newspapers are yelling that coal is now the most crucial commodity in the country.†
Chpt 2.2

The search ended when Eugene Lawson came to shake Taggart's hand and to say, his wet lower lip twisting like a cushion to soften the blow, "Mr. Mouch couldn't come, Jim, Mr. Mouch is so sorry, he had a special plane chartered, but at the last minute things came up, crucial national problems, you know."†
Chpt 2.2

I don't have to explain to you the crucial need of Washington assistance to higher education.†
Chpt 2.2

Mr. Danagger, I came here to speak to you about a matter of crucial importance to the future of your business and mine.†
Chpt 2.3

We realize that you were prompted to disregard legal technicalities by the critical situation of the coal mines and the crucial importance of fuel to the public welfare.†
Chpt 2.4

He sat up straight, buttressed by the columns of paragraphs on yellow-tinged paper, which he was seeing in his mind: "At a time of crucial public need, are we to waste social effort on the manufacture of obsolete products?†
Chpt 2.6

Although the gift program has gone through quite smoothly, there are still a few stubborn individualists left, who have failed to sign-small fry, really, whose patents are of no crucial value, but we cannot let them remain unbound, as a matter of principle, you understand.†
Chpt 2.6

Do you think I'll let your miserable technological problems interfere with crucial social issues?†
Chpt 2.7

To move-had been the words beating in her mind with peculiar urgency-to move-as if movement had become an end in itself, crucial, absolute and doomed.†
Chpt 2.10

It's only that I, too, have a crucial purpose out West, where I ought to hurry, so I was thinking of trying to catch a plane, but I can't do it and it's not necessary.†
Chpt 2.10

"Through all the ages," he said, "the mind has been regarded as evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to exploiterevery form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to expropriation-every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing squadhave been brought down upon those who assumed the responsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection.†
Chpt 3.1

He knew that the darkest secret of the occasion-more crucial, more untouchable, more deadly than whatever was hidden in the mushroom building-was that which had made him agree to come.†
Chpt 3.3

"Dagny, it's imperative, it's crucial, there's nothing to be done about it, to refuse is out of the question, in times like these one has no choice, and—" She glanced at her watch.†
Chpt 3.3

crucial = very important

An emergency file in her office kept a record of all the crucial materials still on hand, on every division of Taggart Transcontinental.†
Chpt 3.5

She did not ask why those men chose to make all their crucial decisions at parties of this kind; she knew that they did.†
Chpt 3.5

"In view of the critical plight of the steel industry," said Mouch with a sudden rush, as if not to give himself time to know what made him uneasy about the nature of Rearden's glance, "and since steel is the most vitally, crucially basic commodity, the foundation of our entire industrial structure, drastic measures must be taken to preserve the country's steel-making facilities, equipment and plant."†
Chpt 3.6

Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking.†
Chpt 3.7

crucial = very important

He wondered why he felt it with such urgency and why it had seemed so crucially important to re-establish the Comet's run.†
Chpt 3.10

Definition:

very important or necessary -- often because it determines how something else will turn out