15th
“’One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name. It’s one or the other. One doesn’t love God and sacrilege impartially. A person who loves everybody and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. A pig is [his] symbol of love for humanity – the creature that accepts anything.
He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him…. He who has the filthy insolence to claim that he loves the clean, steady, unfrightened eyes of man looking through a telescope, and the white stare of an imbecile equally… he is the true hater of mankind.’
‘ What will you say if I give you the answer people usually give… that love is forgiveness… or that love is pity?’
‘ It is bad enough to hear things like that. To hear them from you is revolting—even as a joke…. Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores…. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it—the total passion for the total height— you’re incapable of anything less.
… So, if you seek a glimpse of greatness, if you want exaltation, if you ask for God and refuse to accept the washing of wounds as substitute – you’re called a hater of humanity… because you’ve committed the crime of knowing a love humanity has not learned to deserve.’”
– The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
