From Ayn Rand (1905–1982), Russian-born American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, The Fountainhead (1943):
It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence–such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.
In Your Options: To Serve, Or To Serve, you spoke of a psychologically revealing question. I think something just as, if not more revealing, which likely wouldn’t even require drugs to insure a true answer, is one’s response to the scene in The Fountainhead where Roark agrees to design the Cortlandt project for Keating, particularly the exchange:
“Everybody would say you’re a fool . . . Everybody would say I’m getting everything . . . ”
“You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the money. You’ll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I – I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.” [emphasis added]
“You’re getting more than I am, Howard.”
Yes, the reaction to that tells you all you need to know about a person.