Atlas Shrugged

"Now," said Galt, "do you see what I meant when I said that a zero can't hold a mortgage over life? It's I who'd have to grant you that kind of mortgage—and I don't. The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer not to murder me is not a value."

"Who . . . who's said anything about murdering you?"

"Who's said anything about anything else? If you weren't holding me here at the point of a gun, under threat of death, you wouldn't have a chance to speak to me at all. And that is as much as your guns can accomplish. I don't pay for the removal of threats. I don't buy my life from anyone."

“That's not true," said Mr. Thompson brightly. "If you had a broken leg, you'd pay a doctor to set it.”

"Not if he was the one who broke it." He smiled at Mr. Thompson's silence. "I'm a practical man, Mr. Thompson. I don't think it's practical to establish a person whose sole means of livelihood is the breaking of my bones. I don't think it's practical to support a protection racket."

Mr. Thompson looked thoughtful, then shook his head. "I don't think you're practical," he said. "A practical man doesn't ignore the facts of reality. He doesn't waste his time wishing things to be different or trying to change them. He takes things as they are. We're holding you. It's a fact. Whether you like it or not, it's a fact. You should act accordingly."

"I am."

"What I mean is, you should co-operate. You should recognize an existing situation, accept it and adjust to it."

"If you had blood poisoning, would you adjust to it or act to change it?"

"Oh, that's different! That's physical!"

"You mean, physical facts are open to correction, but your whims are not?"

"Huh?"

"You mean, physical nature can be adjusted to men, but your whims are above the laws of nature, and men must adjust to you?"

"I mean that I hold the upper hand!"

"With a gun in it?"

"Oh, forget about guns! I—"

"I can't forget a fact of reality, Mr. Thompson. That would be impractical."

"All right, then: I hold a gun. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'll act accordingly. I'll obey you."

"What?"

"I'll do whatever you tell me to."

"Do you mean it?"

"I mean it. Literally." He saw the eagerness of Mr. Thompson's face ebb slowly under a look of bewilderment. "I will perform any motion you order me to perform. If you order me to move into the office of an Economic Dictator, I'll move into it. If you order me to sit at a desk, I will sit at it. If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue."

"Oh, but I don't know what directives to issue!"

"I don't, either."

There was a long pause.

"Well?" said Galt. "What are your orders?"

"I want you to save the economy of the country!"

"I don't know how to save it."

"I want you to find a way!"

"I don't know how to find it."

"I want you to think!"

"How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?”

Mr. Thompson looked at him silently—and Galt saw, in the tightened lips, in the jutting chin, in the narrowed eyes, the look of an adolescent bully about to utter that philosophical argument which is expressed by the sentence: I'll bash your teeth in. Galt smiled, looking straight at him, as if hearing the unspoken sentence and underscoring it. Mr.

Thompson looked away.

"No," said Galt, "you don't want me to think. When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend. You want him to become a robot. I shall comply."

Mr. Thompson sighed. "I don't get it," he said in a tone of genuine helplessness. "Something's off and I can't figure it out. Why should you ask for trouble? With a brain like yours—you can beat anybody.

I'm no match for you, and you know it. Why don't you pretend to join us, then gain control and outsmart me?"

"For the same reason that makes you offer it: because you'd win."

"Huh?"

"Because it's the attempt of your betters to beat you on your terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries.

Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for control over your musclemen? Sure, I could pretend—and I wouldn't save your economy or your system, nothing will save them now—but I'd perish and what you'd win would be what you've always won in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another year—or month—bought at the price of whatever hope and effort might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left around you, including me. That's all you're after and that is the length of your range. A month? You'd settle for a week—on the unchallenged absolute that there will always be another victim to find. But you've found your last victim—the one who refuses to play his historical part. The game is up, brother."