Who Said IT: 'atlas Shrugged' Villain Or Real-life Public Figure?
I often hear the criticism, "Atlas Shrugged is so far-fetched. The villains are straw men. No one in real life talks like that." I find that criticism funny, because I think many public figures, throughout history and on into the present, have issued statements that sound very much like villains from Atlas Shrugged. For each question on this quiz, I will provide you a quotation. I will ask you to determine whether the statement was issued by an Atlas Shrugged villain or a real-life public figure. After you had entered your answer, I will provide the correct answer. If it is an Atlas Shrugged villain, I will name the character who said it and provide the page number for the quotation from the 1992 hardcover edition. (Numbering is different
- 1."I don’t think there is such a thing as reality."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 2."Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 3."I don't believe that people should be empowered to do what pleases them the most. We have a responsibility beyond ourselves."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 4."Accordingly the action was done neither from duty nor from direct inclination, but merely with a selfish view. . . . They preserve their life as duty requires, no doubt, but not because duty requires. On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one [a man suffering from extreme misfortune, such as terminal illness], strong in mind, indignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it -- not from inclination or fear, but from duty -- then his maxim has a moral worth. "
- A.
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 5."...free economy is now on trial. Unless it proves its social value, and assumes its social responsibilities, the people won't stand for it. If it doesn't develop a public spirit, it's done for."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 6."And that’s the problem: . . . the simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it, and they have an antipathy toward the means of redistributing wealth."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 7."I'm open-minded enough to believe that two absolutely contradictory propositions can indeed both be able to exist in this wonderful, brilliant world of ours we can only begin to fathom a small percentage of."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 8."I love the fact that America is a contradiction between our ideal of a democracy and our reality of a constitutional republic, and the reason I love that contradiction -- the contradiction that your questions don't quite allow -- is that it is in that gray area where free citizens get active and do things and push the bar and pull the bar. To me, that is the magic of what we have."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 9."It's logical illogic. . . . In my philosophy, and in what governs my behavior as a journalist in a free country, is that if you start to eliminate this 'glorious gray' -- I would call it -- then you're taking me down the road to a system that has absolutes in it, and that, to me, is anathema."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 10."And the fact is, when standards like these have been proposed in the past, opponents have often warned that they would be an assault on business and free enterprise. We can look at the history in this country. . . . Auto executives predicted that having to install seatbelts would bring the downfall of their industry. It didn’t happen."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 11."...I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force it to be free."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 12."...you businessmen have been predicting disaster for years, you've cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us we'll perish -- but we haven't."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 13."In the long run, we'll all be dead."
- A.
'Atlas Shrugged' Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 14."The only justification of private property is public service."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 15."...private property is a trusteeship held for the benefit of society as a whole."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 16."There must be reasonable restrictions upon competition, else we shall see competition destroyed."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 17."Markets are the single most destructive thing human beings have ever created."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 18."Markets are a destructive force and need to be abolished -- replaced with some kind of democratic participatory planning process."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 19."As you all know, thirty-three people lost their lives today, this morning. . . . There's also another kind of violence though that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. . . .There's the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to another country."
- A.
'Atlas Shrugged' Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 20."...we never know what we are talking about. . . . We can never know or understand all the implications of a theory, or its full significance."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 21."Unlimited freedom means that a strong man is free to bully one who is weak and to rob him of his freedom. This is why we demand that the state should limit freedom to a certain extent, so that everyone’s freedom is to be protected by law."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 22."I should expect that even they [businessmen] would regard with approbation the man who, having achieved colossal wealth by his own energy and ability, has not turned his back on the class from which he sprang,...but by acts of signal liberality has shown that he looks upon wealth not as a sort of booty to be enjoyed in selfish isolation, but as a public trust..."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 23."...selfish individualism led us into the wasteland of official indifference to the suffering of many."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 24."...every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
- 25."The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare..."
- A.
Atlas Shrugged Villain
- B.
Real-Life Public Figure
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