The Fountainhead

Ayn Rand-the mother of Objectivism, the lady who redefined the whole definition of egoism, selfishness and above all the real human values.
Her foray into the real BEST SELLING work came with 'The Fountainhead'-Story revolving around an architect named Howard Roark. This architect is not only a fictional character depiction of a building architect but instead a society architect. A person, in whose hands we can actually give our society to mould our values, our ideologies and our thoughts.
Seldom in the history of mankind, we find a man who fight for his values, who puts on stake all the luxuries of life to pursue the core belief he has in his values.
Howard Roark is one such guy. You can't make a guy like this do wrong.
Above all the style of Ayn Rand is so gripping that you would complete this large novel in very less time than expected. The scenes she has imagined, the plot, the correlations and corollaries- they are all very fantastic.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons--a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything
we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute
of man--the function of his reasoning mind.

She feels there are no comprosmises with thoughts. Hence,

But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a
collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement
reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn
upon many individual thoughts. It is a secondary consequence. The primary
act--the process of reason--must be performed by each man alone. We can
divide a meal among many men. We cannot digest it in a collective stomach.
No man can use his lungs to breathe for another man. No man can use his brain to think for another. All the functions of body and spirit are private. They cannot be shared or transferred.

Her definition of Altruism- made her the nail of the eyes of the dogmatic people:

Altruism is the doctrine which demands that man live for
others and place others above self.

The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man’s first duty is to
himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of
others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not
depend primarily upon other men. This includes the whole sphere of his creative
faculty, his thinking, his work. But it does not include the sphere of the
gangster, the altruist and the dictator.

Go and read this masterpiece by Rand and i assure you one thing- It would atleast make you think about various aspects of life with an altogether new approach.

You will be Randalized...