[pessimizer]

I have no idea where you detected anything having to do with Ayn Rand or any of her ideas. It's a pretty way that saying that the rewards of experience can't be granted and must be earned; not that no one eats for free, unless people eat mountaintops. What is a mountaintop without a mountain anyway?

[sevensor]

One of the characters is talking about John Galt in that roundabout way they have of talking about John Galt, and says that he's the man who climbed to the top of the mountain and discovered the fountain of youth, but when he tried to bring it back down, he found that it couldn't be brought back down, only climbed up to. Or something like that. That's why this quote reminded me of Atlas. Probably, they both cribbed it from Nietzsche.