One did not stress total ignorance of a subject if one were in total ignorance of it.

More from The Fountainhead

• A thing is not high if one can reach it; it is not great if one can reason about it; it is not deep if one can see its bottom.
• He loved the wheel of a car as he loved his desk in the office of the Banner: both gave him the same sense of a dangerous monster let loose under the expert direction of his fingers.
• There was a time when you wouldn’t have admitted that there was anything you couldn’t get.
• We are all brothers under the skin-and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it.
• Wasn't it evil to wish without moving or to move without aim?