Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live-that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values-that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind...

For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition) (ed. Penguin, 1963) - ISBN: 9781101137680