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The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man’s highest

potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as

a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature--and struggle never to let him

discover otherwise. It is important here to remember that the only direct,

introspective knowledge of man anyone possesses is of himself.

More specifically, the essential division between these two camps is: those

dedicated to the exaltation of man’s self-esteem and the sacredness of his

happiness on earth--and those determined not to allow either to become possible.

The majority of mankind spend their lives and psychological energy in the

middle, swinging between these two, struggling not to allow the issue to be

named. This does not change the nature of the issue.

Perhaps the best way to communicate The Fountainhead’s sense of life is by means

of the quotation which had stood at the head of my manuscript, but which I

removed from the final, published book. With this opportunity to explain it, I

am glad to bring it back.

I removed it, because of my profound disagreement with the philosophy of its

author, Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an

irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat "Byronic" and mystically

"malevolent" universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to "will," or

feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he

projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness,

expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms.

This is especially true of the quotation I had chosen. I could not endorse its

literal meaning: it proclaims an indefensible tenet--psychological determinism.

But if one takes it as a poetic projection of an emotional experience (and if,

intellectually, one substitutes the concept of an acquired "basic premise" for

the concept of an innate "fundamental certainty"), then that quotation

communicates the inner state of an exalted self-esteem--and sums up the

emotional consequences for which The Fountainhead provides the rational,

philosophical base:

"It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the

order of rank--to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and

deeper meaning,--it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about

itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps,

also, is not to be lost.--The noble soul has reverence for itself.--" (Friedrich

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.)

This view of man has rarely been expressed in human history. Today, it is

virtually non-existent. Yet this is the view with which--in various degrees of

longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion--the best of mankind’s

youth start out in life. It is not even a view, for most of them, but a foggy,

groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a

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sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that

great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead.

It is not in the nature of man--nor of any living entity--to start out by giving

up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process

of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first

touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and

lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these

vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that

maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s

values; practicality, of losing self-esteem. Yet a few hold on and move on,

knowing that that fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape,

purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men

seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.

There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them.

This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead’s lasting appeal: it is

a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man’s glory, showing how much

is possible.

It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the

full reality of man’s proper stature--and that the rest will betray it. It is

those few that move the world and give life its meaning--and it is those few

that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not

me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.

AYN RAND New York, May 1968

CONTENTS

PART ONE

Peter Keating

PART TWO

Ellsworth M. Toohey

PART THREE

Gail Wynand

PART FOUR

Howard Roark

I offer my profound gratitude to the great profession of architecture and its

heroes who have given us some of the highest expressions of man’s genius, yet

have remained unknown, undiscovered by the majority of men. And to the

architects who gave me their generous assistance in the technical matters of

this book.

No person or event in this story is intended as a reference to any real person

or event. The titles of the newspaper columns were invented and used by me in

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the first draft of this novel five years ago. They were not taken from and have

no reference to any actual newspaper columns or features.

--AYN RAND March 10, 1943

Part One: PETER KEATING

1.

HOWARD ROARK laughed.

He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen

explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water

seemed immovable, the stone--flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief

moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause

more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.

The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks

went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky. So that the

world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the

feet of the man on the cliff.

His body leaned back against the sky. It was a body of long straight lines and

angles, each curve broken into planes. He stood, rigid, his hands hanging at his

sides, palms out. He felt his shoulder blades drawn tight together, the curve of

his neck, and the weight of the blood in his hands. He felt the wind behind him,

in the hollow of his spine. The wind waved his hair against the sky. His hair

was neither blond nor red, but the exact color of ripe orange rind.

He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things

which now lay ahead.

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced

and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He

knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already,

because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh.

He tried to consider it. But he forgot. He was looking at the granite.

He did not laugh as his eyes stopped in awareness of the earth around him. His

face was like a law of nature--a thing one could not question, alter or

implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and

steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a

saint.

He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked

at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on

the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge

as girders against the sky.

These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite

and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the

shape my hands will give them.

Then he shook his head, because he remembered that morning and that there were

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many things to be done. He stepped to the edge, raised his arms, and dived down

into the sky below.

He cut straight across the lake to the shore ahead. He reached the rocks where

he had left his clothes. He looked regretfully about him. For three years, ever

since he had lived in Stanton, he had come here for his only relaxation, to

swim, to rest, to think, to be alone and alive, whenever he could find one hour

to spare, which had not been often. In his new freedom the first thing he had

wanted to do was to come here, because he knew that he was coming for the last

time. That morning he had been expelled from the Architectural School of the

Stanton Institute of Technology. He pulled his clothes on: old denim trousers,

sandals, a shirt with short sleeves and most of its buttons missing. He swung

down a narrow trail among the boulders, to a path running through a green slope,

to the road below.

He walked swiftly, with a loose, lazy expertness of motion. He walked down the

long road, in the sun. Far ahead Stanton lay sprawled on the coast of

Massachusetts, a little town as a setting for the gem of its existence--the

great institute rising on a hill beyond.

The township of Stanton began with a dump. A gray mound of refuse rose in the

grass. It smoked faintly. Tin cans glittered in the sun. The road led past the

first houses to a church. The church was a Gothic monument of shingles painted

pigeon blue. It had stout wooden buttresses supporting nothing. It had

stained-glass windows with heavy traceries of imitation stone. It opened the way

into long streets edged by tight, exhibitionist lawns. Behind the lawns stood

wooden piles tortured out of all shape: twisted into gables, turrets, dormers;

bulging with porches; crushed under huge, sloping roofs. White curtains floated

at the windows. A garbage can stood at a side door, flowing over. An old

Pekinese sat upon a cushion on a door step, its mouth drooling. A line of

diapers fluttered in the wind between the columns of a porch.

People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring after

him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct

his presence awakened in most people. Howard Roark saw no one. For him, the

streets were empty. He could have walked there naked without concern. He crossed

the heart of Stanton, a broad green edged by shop windows. The windows displayed

new placards announcing:

WELCOME TO THE CLASS OF ’22! GOOD LUCK, CLASS OF ’22! The Class of ’22 of

the Stanton Institute of Technology was holding its commencement exercises that

afternoon.

Roark swung into a side street, where at the end of a long row, on a knoll over

a green ravine, stood the house of Mrs. Keating. He had boarded at that house

for three years.

Mrs. Keating was out on the porch. She was feeding a couple of canaries in a

cage suspended over the railing. Her pudgy little hand stopped in mid-air when

she saw him. She watched him with curiosity. She tried to pull her mouth into a

proper expression of sympathy; she succeeded only in betraying that the process

was an effort.

He was crossing the porch without noticing her. She stopped him.

"Mr. Roark!"

"Yes?"

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"Mr. Roark, I’m so sorry about--" she hesitated demurely, "--about what happened

this morning."

"What?" he asked.

"Your being expelled from the Institute. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I only

want you to know that I feel for you."

He stood looking at her. She knew that he did not see her. No, she thought, it

was not that exactly. He always looked straight at people and his damnable eyes

never missed a thing, it was only that he made people feel as if they did not

exist. He just stood looking. He would not answer.

"But what I say," she continued, "is that if one suffers in this world, it’s on

account of error. Of course, you’ll have to give up the architect profession

now, won’t you? But then a young man can always earn a decent living clerking or

selling or something."

He turned to go.

"Oh, Mr. Roark!" she called.

"Yes?"

"The Dean phoned for you while you were out."

For once, she expected some emotion from him; and an emotion would be the

equivalent of seeing him broken. She did not know what it was about him that had

always made her want to see him broken.

"Yes?" he asked.

"The Dean," she repeated uncertainly, trying to recapture her effect. "The Dean

himself through his secretary."

"Well?"

"She said to tell you that the Dean wanted to see you immediately the moment you

got back."

"Thank you."

"What do you suppose he can want now?"

"I don’t know."

He had said: "I don’t know." She had heard distinctly: "I don’t give a damn."

She stared at him incredulously.

"By the way," she said, "Petey is graduating today." She said it without

apparent relevance.

"Today? Oh, yes."

"It’s a great day for me. When I think of how I skimped and slaved to put my boy

through school. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not one to complain. Petey’s a

brilliant boy."

She stood drawn up. Her stout little body was corseted so tightly under the

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starched folds of her cotton dress that it seemed to squeeze the fat out to her

wrists and ankles.

"But of course," she went on rapidly, with the eagerness of her favorite

subject, "I’m not one to boast. Some mothers are lucky and others just aren’t.

We’re all in our rightful place. You just watch Petey from now on. I’m not one

to want my boy to kill himself with work and I’ll thank the Lord for any small

success that comes his way. But if that boy isn’t the greatest architect of this

U.S.A., his mother will want to know the reason why!"

He moved to go.

"But what am I doing, gabbing with you like that!" she said brightly. "You’ve