There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.

The passage treats the human face as the most information-rich “text” we encounter: a condensed record of character, choices, and inner life. Rand suggests that perception is not merely superficial; a first look can register essentials—strength or evasiveness, openness or calculation—before conscious analysis catches up. The limitation is not the data but our interpretive skill: we often sense something true yet cannot “unravel” it into explicit knowledge. In a broadly Randian key, the quote elevates the immediacy of perception and the moral legibility of character, implying that people reveal themselves continuously, and that learning to read those revelations is part of rational judgment.