Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept – and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark [the book's hero] and hold Peter Keating [an incompetent architect in the book] as a great architect. You’ve destroyed architecture. Build up Lois Cook [an incompetent writer] and you’ve destroyed literature. Hail Ike [an incompetent playwrite] and you’ve destroyed the theatre. Glorify Lancelot Clokey [an incompetent newspaperman] and you’ve destroyed the press. Don’t set out to raze all shrines – you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity - and the shrines are razed.
The main body of our citizens . . . remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are the Executive, the Judiciary, two out three branches of the legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, [and] all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty . . .
We hold these truths . . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed . . . with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
- 1776