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  "text": "\"Look, Gail.\" Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. \"Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life.\"\n\n\"Your strength?\"\n\n\"Your work.\" He tossed the branch aside. \"The material the earth offers you and what you make of it . . . \"",
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      "slug": "as-poles-of-good",
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      "text": "\"As poles of good and evil, he was offered two conceptions: egoism and altruism. Egoism was held to mean the sacrifice of others to self. Altruism—the sacrifice of self to others. This tied man irrevocably to other men and left him nothing but a choice of pain: his own pain borne for the sake of others or pain inflicted upon others for the sake of self. […] Man was forced to accept masochism as his ideal—under the threat that sadism was his only alternative.\"",
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      "slug": "every-major-horror",
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      "text": "\"Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.\"",
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      "page": 741,
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      "text": "\"The creators were not selfless. It is the whole secret of their power—that it was self-sufficient, self-motivated, self-generated. A first cause, a fount of energy, a life force, a Prime Mover. The creator served nothing and no one. He had lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.\"",
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