Atlas Shrugged: Part 3, Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

James barges into Dagny’s apartment, pale and frantic, to announce that Hank has vanished. He declares it a national emergency and demands that Dagny help locate him. To his shock, she begins to laugh. Her laughter is not cruel, but triumphant—Hank has escaped. He has broken free from the world of compromises and coercion. Dagny refuses to play along with James’s panic and throws him out, recognizing that Hank’s departure is not a tragedy but a victory. Left alone, she thinks about on her own sense of peace and strength, feeling that Rearden’s disappearance marks a turning point she has been waiting for.

Days later, Dagny receives a brief note from Hank. It contains only two sentences: he has met John Galt, and he does not blame her. The message overwhelms her. It confirms what she already suspected: Hank has joined the strike. She is torn between pride and sadness. His escape represents everything she wants for herself, yet she cannot follow. As she contemplates his absence, the world around her continues to disintegrate. Violence erupts across the country. Rebellions break out. Cities burn. States begin to secede. Armed gangs roam highways. The government loses control, but the newspapers print nothing but denial.

Amid the chaos, the looters plan a public spectacle to pacify the country. President Thompson, the Head of State, schedules a national address for November 22. All radio networks are ordered to broadcast it, and media outlets promote it relentlessly. Dagny is invited to the broadcast and reluctantly agrees to attend, bringing Eddie with her. The event is heavily staged. Politicians and bureaucrats hover in a state of nervous excitement. Photographers attempt to force Dagny into staged poses with Thompson and Dr. Stadler, but she refuses. She has no desire to participate in their farce.

As the scheduled time approaches, a technician announces that something is wrong with the signal. One by one, the nation’s radio stations fall silent. Confusion spreads across the studio as engineers scramble. Before anyone can act, a voice—firm and calm—breaks through the silence. It is John Galt. He identifies himself as the man who has stopped the motor of the world. He tells the country to listen carefully. For the next three hours, he says, they will hear the truth about why their world is crumbling. Then he begins his speech, a sweeping, unflinching account of his philosophy and his strike.

Galt begins by rejecting the dominant moral code of self-sacrifice. He tells his listeners that they have been taught to live not for themselves, but for others. They have been told that virtue consists of suffering, that happiness is a sin, and that their lives belong to anyone who claims to need them. He announces that he and people of reason have withdrawn from the world to stop sustaining a system that preaches death. He explains that the crisis is not accidental; it is the consequence of a moral code that punishes ability and exalts helplessness.

Galt outlines what he believes to be the true morality—the Morality of Life—based on the requirements of human survival. Life, he explains, is a process of self-sustaining action. Humans, unlike animals, must choose to live, and that choice must be guided by reason. Reason, not faith or force, is humanity’s only tool of survival. He declares that the individual’s highest moral purpose is to achieve their own happiness through rational effort. A code of morality must serve this end, not deny it. Virtue is not the act of suffering, but the act of thinking, producing, and loving one’s own existence.

Galt identifies three cardinal values—reason, purpose, and self-esteem—and the corresponding virtues that follow from them: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. These are not arbitrary rules but principles necessary to sustain life. He asserts that happiness is not a gift, but a result. It is the emotional reward for living in accordance with reason. Galt dismisses the notion that sacrifice is noble. Sacrifice, he says, is the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one. It is not a moral act, but a betrayal of life.

Galt also critiques the idea of original sin, calling it a doctrine that condemns humankind’s nature, mind, and joy. The myth of humanity’s fall from grace, he argues, is not a moral warning but a deliberate attempt to impede human potential. He attacks those who preach that knowledge, pleasure, and success are evil. These doctrines, he says, are designed to break the human spirit and instill guilt. They teach that a person’s virtue is their sin, and that to be good is to suffer. Galt calls for the rejection of this code, in favor of a morality grounded in reality.

Additionally, Galt condemns the “mystics of spirit” and the “mystics of muscle”—those who seek to rule people by faith or by force. Mystics of spirit demand obedience to God and sacrifice of the flesh. Mystics of muscle demand obedience to society and sacrifice of the mind. But both reject reason. Both claim to possess knowledge by means other than thinking. Galt warns that these mystics have created a culture of death, in which people are told to deny their mind and live for others. He accuses these mystics of destroying civilization by turning morality into a weapon.

Galt refutes the idea that physical existence is separate from the mind. He argues that a person is an indivisible whole, body and mind united. To sacrifice one for the other is to commit spiritual suicide. He says that the true enemy of a person is the doctrine that preaches duty above desire, and guilt above joy. Such a morality destroys ambition, productivity, and love. It tells people to feel shame for wanting to live. Galt calls this the morality of death. He demands that it be rejected entirely—not compromised, not reformed, but abandoned.

Galt explains that the looters’ world rewards the unearned and punishes the capable. In their system, need is a claim and competence a crime. The looters demand that people produce, then take their rewards. They preach that love must be unconditional and values must be sacrificed. But Galt declares that love is a response to values—and that no one deserves the unearned. A moral life is a trader’s life, he says—an exchange of value for value. A person who gives or receives the undeserved is not moral, but a parasite.

Galt urges individuals to stop supporting their destroyers. He tells them to withdraw their sanction. Stop obeying. Stop producing for those who rob and shame you. He asks them to join the strike, to cease pretending that evil can be tolerated. The world cannot be saved by compromise. It must be rebuilt from the ground up, on the principles of reason and individualism. Galt insists that people owe nothing to their tormentors. They owe only fidelity to reality and to their own minds. He warns that as long as people choose guilt over pride, they will remain enslaved.

Galt tells the story of his experimental motor—the machine that could have transformed the world. He abandoned it because he would not give it to a society that demanded sacrifice. He watched the world fall, knowing that it must face the consequences of its own code. He speaks to those still fighting, telling them that they are losing not because they lack strength, but because they support their enemies. He begs them to stop. Let the looters perish by their own creed. The world must learn that thought and effort are not infinite, and that they must be earned.

Galt shifts focus to government. A proper government, he says, has only three functions: to protect rights by means of police, army, and courts. It must not redistribute wealth, regulate behavior, or dictate morality. He calls for the abolition of all forms of coercion, economic and spiritual. He asserts that rights are inalienable—not granted by God or state but derived from human nature. The right to life, liberty, and property are not negotiable.

Galt warns against the culture of compromise, where people are told that truth lies in the middle of two extremes. There is no middle ground between food and poison, he says—only death. He accuses the moderates of enabling evil by refusing to judge. Moral neutrality is not a virtue, but a betrayal. Galt urges listeners to take a stand, to judge good and evil, and to choose life. He demands a society where values are upheld, not sacrificed, and where justice is based on achievement, not on need.

Galt exposes the horror of collectivism, where the productive subsidize the incompetent. In such a system, those who think are enslaved by those who feel. Galt insists that this inversion must end. He declares that the human mind is the root of wealth and progress. No collective can think. No committee can create. All values come from the individual. A society that punishes success cannot survive: it will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, leaving nothing but misery and ash.

Galt begins to wrap up his speech with a call to action. To those who still value reason, he says: walk away. Leave the world to its looters. Let them face the end they have chosen, he says, and join the strike. Then, in a final moment of intimacy, Galt speaks directly to Dagny. He calls her “my love,” and asks if she heard his words. His voice softens as he says that he has always known she would hear him, and that she would understand. He reminds her of her choice: if she ever decides to join him, she need only draw a dollar sign on the statue of Nat Taggart. He will come for her. Until then, he will wait—because he loves her more than life, but he will not betray his cause.

The speech ends with the strikers’ oath. “I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” Across the country, millions of listeners are left in silence. The airwaves fall quiet again. Dagny stands in the studio, stunned. She knows now that everything has changed. John Galt has spoken, and the strike is no longer hidden. The truth has been declared. The motor has stopped—and the world has heard why.