Well, first off, Oregon Boy, it's John GALT. You must have gone to government schools all your life, they don't let you read Ayn Rand at those institutions:
Who is John Galt?
So asks Ayn Rand in her novel, Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. It is the first line of her panoramic vista of over 1,000 pages that follows the exploits of "giants" as they come to understand the vision and the mission of this man named John Galt, " . . . who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did."
In 1991, the Library of Congress of the United States and the Book of the Month Club announced that Atlas Shrugged was the most influential book ever published in America - after the Bible. In 1998, a documentary film titled, "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," was nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary film of the year. Such have been the accolades given to this novelist philosopher and the principles she wrote about over fifty years ago. As such, these principles are worthy of personal consideration and emulation in our lives.
The philosophies of Ms. Rand are interwoven throughout the narrative of her book. The major thesis in most of her works is that we live in a "benevolent universe" and the "happiness is the lot of man, not pain." And this work, Atlas Shrugged, in essence, presents:
…The concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
This concept is also expressed in the statement: "Man is that he might have joy." It is also proclaimed in the lines attributed to John Locke, as written by Thomas Jefferson in America's Declaration of Independence, "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."