Looking down at other people. I was brought up to treat people as you treat yourself, with respect. The people you meet on the way up are the people you meet on the way down.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Discrimination, for any reason.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, May 2019 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 196 →
Matthew Modine
American actor
The inability to negotiate peace and truly forgive.
Bonnie Raitt
Singer and guitarist
Arrogance and entitlement.
Anne Enright
Novelist and short-story writer
I find it really interesting the way people are drawn to power, usually male power, sometimes in its dark mode. I wonder what they get from it. My experience of bastards is that there is very little material benefit gained from being in their company, though you feel there might be, any minute. Or you get something for a while and then the polarity switches. It’s a huge con. Trump made the mechanism clear – in this, I think he is a timely figure.
More from Nancy Pelosi
View profile →I’m not into self-deploring.
That I would have focused more on languages.
No contest: seeing my grandchildren enjoying each other.
My husband, Paul, who is an enabler of the exuberance of his wife and five kids.
When I was raising my children.
The current occupant of the White House.
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 403 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 78 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 28 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 13 answers
- What is the most overrated virtue? 10 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 8 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Barack Obama, Bob Schieffer, Charles Osgood, Clive Myrie, Jon Sopel, Keir Starmer
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All values & belief questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject