To shrug - Atlas Shrugged

By their own statement, it is they who need you and have nothing to offer you in return. By their own statement, you must support them because they cannot survive without you. Consider the obscenity of offering their impotence and their need of you as a justification for your torture. Are you willing to accept it? Do you care to purchase at the price of your great endurance, at the price of your agony the satisfaction of the needs of your own destroyers?"

"No!"

"Mr. Rearden," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders what would you tell him to do?"

"I… don't know. What… could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."