Day with a Difference - July 03, 2006

Today's Inspirational Quote:

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. - Ayn Rand

Works of Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead was Rand's "breakthrough" novel: her first book to top the best-seller charts. Many fans of Rand's novels consider it her best. The story follows the life of Howard Roark, an architect, and several people he interacts with, including his lover, a fellow architect, an architectural critic and a newspaper publisher. In 1949, a movie version of the novel (with a screenplay written by Rand herself) was released.

The Fountainhead is divided into four major sections, named after four of the major characters from the novel. The sections contain unnamed, numbered chapters, with the chapter numbers starting over for each section.

Part One: Peter Keating (15 chapters)
Part Two: Ellsworth M. Toohey (15 chapters)
Part Three: Gail Wynand (9 chapters)
Part Four: Howard Roark (20 chapters)

The philosophy of Ayn Rand, a twentieth-century novelist and philosopher, is known as Objectivism. It is a philosophical system, one of several doctrines holding that all reality is objective and external to the mind and that knowledge is reliably based on observed objects and events. The five central concepts of Objectivism are objectivity, reason, rational self-interest, libertarianism and romantic realism.

Expand your knowledge base

A clean joke to start your week with laughter

Taking Pictures: A photographer for a national news magazine was assigned to get photos of a big forest fire. Smoke at the scene was too thick to get any good shots, so he frantically called his home office to hire a plane. "It will be waiting for you at the airport!" he was assured by his editor. As soon as he got to the small, rural airport, sure enough, a plane was warming up near the runway. He jumped in with his equipment and yelled, "Let's go! Let's go!" The pilot swung the plane into the wind and soon they were in the air. "Fly over the north side of the fire," said the photographer, "and make three or four low level passes." "Why?" asked the pilot. "Because I'm going to take pictures! I'm a photographer, and photographers take pictures!" said the photographer with great exasperation and impatience. After a long pause the pilot said, "You mean you're not my instructor?" ...

Have a memorable day!
Priya