The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

by

Ayn Rand

Peter Keating is the antithesis of Howard Roark, and his life demonstrates the dangers of basing one’s identity and happiness on societal approval. Roark and Keating begin their journeys in the novel at the same place—they are both students of architecture at Stanton—but they take very different paths. Keating has no real interest in architecture—he only pursues it because he thinks it will earn him money and fame. He graduates with highest honors and goes to work at the highly reputed architectural firm of Francon & Heyer. Roark, on the other hand, loves building but is expelled from the college and chooses to work under Henry Cameron, an architect who is considered a has-been by the architectural community. Roark admires Cameron and is immune to others’ opinions of him. Keating has no faith in his own architectural ability and coasts by on his good looks and social skills. He slowly makes his way to the top of the firm by lying to and manipulating the people around him. He even stoops to causing Lucius Heyer to have a stroke so he can take his place as partner. Despite all this, Keating’s success doesn’t last, and he ends up a sad disappointment to himself while Roark thrives in their field, carried through by his love for his work. The only genuine thing that Keating wants for himself is to marry Catherine Halsey, whom he loves very much. However, he doesn’t have the courage to follow through with this and instead ends up marrying Dominique Francon for the prestige it will grant him. Thus, he sacrifices his opportunity for happiness and falls in with Toohey’s circle. Since Keating parrots popular opinions and lives for making good impressions on those around him, he exemplifies a person who has no integrity or sense of self. Towards the end of the novel, Roark feels pity for the first time in his life when he understands there can be no redemption for Keating.

Peter Keating Quotes in The Fountainhead

The The Fountainhead quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Keating or refer to Peter Keating. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Individualism Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Chapter 9 Quotes

Then came the voice.

“My friends,” it said, simply and solemnly. “My brothers,” it added softly, involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion. […]

It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. […] It was the voice of a giant.

Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere. […]

Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only […] a nameless thing in which she was being swallowed.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.

Related Characters: Ellsworth Toohey (speaker), Peter Keating (speaker), Catherine Halsey
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Chapter 15 Quotes

“Just drop that fool delusion that you’re better than everybody else—and go to work. […] You’ll have people running after you, you’ll have clients, you’ll have friends, you’ll have an army of draftsmen to order around! […]”

[…]

“Look, Peter, I believe you. I know that you have nothing to gain by saying this. I know more than that. I know that you don’t want me to succeed—it’s all right, I’m not reproaching you, I’ve always known it—you don’t want me ever to reach these things you’re offering me. And yet you’re pushing me on to reach them, quite sincerely. […] And it’s not love for me, because that wouldn’t make you so angry—and so frightened….Peter, what is it that disturbs you about me as I am?”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating (speaker)
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 191-192
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Chapter 14 Quotes

“I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. […] I’ve given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself—and so you would not love me. To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. […] I want you whole, as I am, as you’ll remain in the battle you’ve chosen.”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating, Dominique Francon
Page Number: 376
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3: Chapter 2 Quotes

“You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?”

“Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.

He sat still, his eyes wide. […]

“You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You’ve never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act—a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. […] You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. […] Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes.”

Related Characters: Dominique Francon (speaker), Peter Keating
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 425-426
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 8 Quotes

When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was sick with pity.

He had never felt this before—not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him. Those moments had been clean. But this was pity—this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling—his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.

This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

Related Characters: Howard Roark, Peter Keating, Steven Mallory, Henry Cameron
Page Number: 582-583
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 11 Quotes

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating. […] He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. […] And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. […] They’re second-handers.”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating, Gail Wynand
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 605
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 14 Quotes

“Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. […] Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. […] Man realizes that he is incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue—and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. […] His soul gives up his self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. […] Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men.”

Related Characters: Ellsworth Toohey (speaker), Howard Roark, Peter Keating
Page Number: 635
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Fountainhead LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Fountainhead PDF

Peter Keating Quotes in The Fountainhead

The The Fountainhead quotes below are all either spoken by Peter Keating or refer to Peter Keating. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Individualism Theme Icon
).
Part 1: Chapter 9 Quotes

Then came the voice.

“My friends,” it said, simply and solemnly. “My brothers,” it added softly, involuntarily, both full of emotion and smiling apologetically at the emotion. […]

It was not a voice, it was a miracle. It unrolled as a velvet banner. […] It was the voice of a giant.

Keating stood, his mouth open. He did not hear what the voice was saying. He heard the beauty of the sounds without meaning. He felt no need to know the meaning; he could accept anything, he would be led blindly anywhere. […]

Keating looked at Catherine. There was no Catherine; there was only […] a nameless thing in which she was being swallowed.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. His voice was savage. He was afraid.

Related Characters: Ellsworth Toohey (speaker), Peter Keating (speaker), Catherine Halsey
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 109
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 1: Chapter 15 Quotes

“Just drop that fool delusion that you’re better than everybody else—and go to work. […] You’ll have people running after you, you’ll have clients, you’ll have friends, you’ll have an army of draftsmen to order around! […]”

[…]

“Look, Peter, I believe you. I know that you have nothing to gain by saying this. I know more than that. I know that you don’t want me to succeed—it’s all right, I’m not reproaching you, I’ve always known it—you don’t want me ever to reach these things you’re offering me. And yet you’re pushing me on to reach them, quite sincerely. […] And it’s not love for me, because that wouldn’t make you so angry—and so frightened….Peter, what is it that disturbs you about me as I am?”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating (speaker)
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 191-192
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2: Chapter 14 Quotes

“I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. […] I’ve given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself—and so you would not love me. To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. […] I want you whole, as I am, as you’ll remain in the battle you’ve chosen.”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating, Dominique Francon
Page Number: 376
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 3: Chapter 2 Quotes

“You’re not here, Dominique. You’re not alive. Where’s your I?”

“Where’s yours, Peter?” she asked quietly.

He sat still, his eyes wide. […]

“You’re beginning to see, aren’t you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You’ve never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn’t want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act—a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. […] You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. […] Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes.”

Related Characters: Dominique Francon (speaker), Peter Keating
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 425-426
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 8 Quotes

When Keating had gone, Roark leaned against the door, closing his eyes. He was sick with pity.

He had never felt this before—not when Henry Cameron collapsed in the office at his feet, not when he saw Steven Mallory sobbing on a bed before him. Those moments had been clean. But this was pity—this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling—his own shame that he should have to pronounce such judgment upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect.

This is pity, he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought that there must be something terribly wrong with a world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue.

Related Characters: Howard Roark, Peter Keating, Steven Mallory, Henry Cameron
Page Number: 582-583
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 11 Quotes

“It’s what I couldn’t understand about people for a long time. They have no self. They live within others. They live second-hand. Look at Peter Keating. […] He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. […] And isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. […] They’re second-handers.”

Related Characters: Howard Roark (speaker), Peter Keating, Gail Wynand
Related Symbols: Crowds and Groups
Page Number: 605
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 4: Chapter 14 Quotes

“Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. […] Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. […] Man realizes that he is incapable of what he’s accepted as the noblest virtue—and it gives him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. […] His soul gives up his self-respect. You’ve got him. He’ll obey. […] Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men.”

Related Characters: Ellsworth Toohey (speaker), Howard Roark, Peter Keating
Page Number: 635
Explanation and Analysis: