Objectivism 101 Concept Chart Metaphysics Epistemology Ethics Life as the Moral Standard Morality is a Guide to Living Reason is Man's Means of Survival Values Virtue Self-Interest Harmony of Interests Self Reliance / Independence Productiveness Integrity Honesty Pride Justice Benevolence Rationality Metaphysical Justice Free Will Courage Trader Principle Politics Esthetics Discuss Ethics

Honesty

Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud -- that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelligence, their rationality, their perceptiveness becomes the enemies you have to dread and flee -- that you do not care to live as a dependent, lest of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling -- that honesty is not a social duty, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most profoundly selfish virtue man can practice: his refusal to sacrifice the reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged