Atlas Shrugged

I've been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and I finally got through that 65 page long speech, which is monumental. That was a lot of logically deep reasoning for way too many pages. But I picked out a few things. Firstly government...
pg 973. "The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."

She outlines all the the government should be and nothing more. I feel like our government is starting to push itself into our lives more and more, they think they can fix all the problems, but in doing so, they create more problems and create more debt in the process. It's interesting how many ties there are to the government she sets up in her novel, compared to the direction ours is going.

But I've finally finished Atlas Shrugged! All 1,069 pages of it. Once I got through the 65 page speech of deeply intelligent logically stuff...it was fast to finish. But I think I still like The Fountainhead better, probably because I read it first.

Here's some quotes from the speech given by John Galt...They're taken out of context so they might not sound as good as they did in the book but they were wrapped around 65 other pages supporting their meaning.

"Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch- or build a cyclotron- without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think."

"But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."

And here are some other quotes from throughout the book...
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent."

"What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish."