That was actually the case, so the example is particularly wrong. That doesn't change the fact that living by your own teaching is the basic of a true philosopher (See Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard...). Rand was a wingnut, not a philosopher.
Well, look at Socrates. Read Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. It's pretty clear that he believed his philosophy, and both lived and died by it. Although, if you insist on being doubtful, we only know about him through the dialogs which Plato recorded (or wrote), and he could have simply been used as a mouthpiece for Plato's views, though he certainly did exist in some form.
But really, if you doubt and think that the belief is hero worship, you should probably spend some time reading the wikipedia articles (or whatever else) on them, and come up with your own refutations. Figure out how their lives contradict their philosophies, and then come back and tell us.
That's my point, we know so little about them that it's impossible to compare.
Everyone, no matter how great/influential has a mundane, humdrum, petty aspect to his/her existence. We are just privy to the biographies of the philosophers you mention filtered through the lens of centuries of hero worship.
Rand lived in the television age. When I first saw her in a video interview after reading her books I was disappointed at first glimpse. It's inevitable. Nobody can ever live up to their creative achievements.
> Although, if you insist on being doubtful, we only know about him through the dialogs which Plato recorded...
And Xenophon, too. What stroke me reading them is that though Xenophon "philosophy" is much more shallow and dull than Plato's, Socrates' character appears extremely similar and /true/ both in Plato's and Xenophon's dialogs. He sounds real.
Plato spend decades trying to create the real "Philosopher king" with Dionysius I, then Dion, last Dionysius II); Descartes spent his life in science made possible by his philosophy; Kant life is known well enough and is a good story to know (he was late for his daily walk once in his life, because he has heard of the french Revolution) and so his Kierkegaard (the story of the love of his life is interesting enough to be the subject of many books).
