Top 4 Anthem quotes
“There was no pain in their eyes and no knowledge of the agony of their body. There was only joy in them, and pride, a pride holier than it is fit for human pride to be.”
Chapter 2
This is Prometheus’s description of the final moments of the Transgressor of the forbidden word. The author explains a crucial fact of her philosophy, objectivism, through the martyrdom of the Transgressor. Prometheus’s understanding that the man is not a criminal but he is rather a saint drives home the argument that ultimately the greatest pleasure lay in the realization of the self. The transgressor is not concerned with the violence that is visited upon him because he has achieved the ecstasy of recognizing himself as a separate individual.
“Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past, but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must.”
Chapter 7
The climax of the novella can be said to be the presentation of the bulb to the world council of scholars, who outrightly reject it. The reason for the author's fundamental criticism of Collectivism theories is as she argues that such societies are doomed to inflict atrocities. This is not because all collectivist movements are corrupted by individuals like Stalin, but rather because the ideology itself hampered innovation and progress. The need for consensus prevents the society in the novella from progressing beyond candles, and not because their scholars are unable to come up with alternatives.
“I am. I think. I will.”
Chapter 11
Prometheus reads the manuscripts in the old house that he discovers, and through it, he learns the names of beliefs that had already begun to formulate in his mind. He understands ‘I,’ and the central fact that the individual lies at the center of his universe. The individual is shaped by his subjective perception of the world, and his concern must always be himself first and the others second. He believes that this is the central injustice of the world that he had inhabited, as he and his peers had been forced to think of themselves as a people, and never as separate people.
“But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate.”
Chapter 12
Ayn Rand did not believe that Individualism would ever be completely removed from the world since it was the foundation of human happiness. Yet, she could not help but notice the growing popularism of Collectivist ideas even in places like the United States. She published Anthem with the intent of giving courage to those that argued for Individualism and demonstrating to the collectivists, what she considered to be the logical conclusion of their philosophy.
