Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has
destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing—you who
dread knowledge—I am the man who will now tell you.

You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You have said it yourself,
half in fear, half in hope that the words had no meaning. You have cried that man's
sins are destroying the world and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness
to practice the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice, you
have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster.

In the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils, which you
held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have
sacrificed independence to unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You have
sacrificed wealth to need. You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have
sacrificed happiness to duty.

You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you
held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world
around you? That world is not the product of your sins; it is the product and the
image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final
perfection.

You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I—I am
the man who has granted you your wish.

Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality was designed to
destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it out of your way and out of
your reach. I have removed the source of all those evils you were sacrificing one by
one. I have ended your battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your
world of man's mind.

Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is
impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose mind isn't. There are values higher
than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren't.

While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men of justice, of
independence, of reason, of wealth, of self-esteem—I beat you to it, I reached them
first. I told them the nature of the game you were playing and the nature of that
moral code of yours, which they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I
showed them the way to live by another morality-mine. It is mine that they chose to
follow.

All the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who
have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be
found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty.
Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you
own us. You don't. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the
mind.

We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of
unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that
the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is
guilt.

There is a difference between our strike and all those you've practiced for centuries:
our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil,
according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are
useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer.
We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen
not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion,
according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have
left you free to face reality—the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a
world without mind.

We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the
givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no
terms of bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We
do not need you.

Are you now crying: No, this was not what you wanted? A mindless world of ruins
was not your goal? You did not want us to leave you? You moral cannibals, I know
that you've always known what it was that you wanted. But your game is up, because
now we know it, too.