Question from the audience at the Nathaniel Branden Institute circa 1965, a place where the word "God," pronounced aloud, provoked paroxysms of laughter, the only humor in and otherwise humorless lecture hall:
Audience Member: "Might not religious faith play a useful role in helping one endure tribulations?"
Rand: "What sort of inadequate and corrupt psychology would lead someone to ask that?"
Had Rand had children and stayed off pills, she might have experienced real human connection, enjoyed better mental health and therefore had something interesting to contribute to philosophy. As it is, her hopelessly stunted and paranoid worldview and unwarranted boundless faith in reason make her only a thinker of minor interest, not the "greatest philosopher since Aristotle" her cult followers make her out to be.