What do you think?

Thinking 

is man’s 

only basic virtue,

from which 

all the others proceed.

 

And his basic vice,

the source of all his evils,

is that nameless act

which all of you practice,

but struggle never to admit:

 

 

 

 

 

the act of blanking out,
the willful suspension of one’s consciousness,
the refusal to think :
not blindness, 

but the refusal to see;
not ignorance, 

but the refusal to know.

 

It is the act of 

unfocusing 

your mind

and inducing 

an inner fog 

to escape  

the responsibility 

of judgment

on the unstated premise 
that a thing 
will not exist 
if only you 
refuse 
to identify it,
that 

A will not be A 

so long as you 

do not pronounce 

the verdict 

“It is.”

Non-thinking is

an act of annihilation,
a wish to negate existence,
an attempt to wipe out reality.

But existence exists;

reality 

is not to be wiped out, 

it will merely 

wipe out the wiper.

By refusing to say 

“It is,”

you are refusing to say 

“I am.”

By suspending  

your judgment,

you are  

negating  

your person.

When a man declares: 

“Who am I to know?”

he is declaring: 

“Who am I to live?”

 Ayn Rand : Galt's Speech - For the New Intellectual