54 uses
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Definition
intentional deception — usually for financial gain or ego
- Yet no penny of his wealth had been obtained by force or fraud; he was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.1.3 Part 1 Chapter 3 — The Top and the Bottom (80% in)
- "The literature of the past," said Balph Eubank, "was a shallow fraud.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (19% in)
- Well, no, I can't tell whether it's a product of genius, as you say, or just another fraud as a great many people are saying, Miss Taggart, a great many...... Well, no, I can't say that it does matter one way or the other, because who am I to take a chance on a job of this kind?1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (3% in)
- Are you asking me to help him stage a fraud of that kind?1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (84% in)
- Is it a fraud-or isn't it?1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (84% in)
- Is it a fraud or not?1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (85% in)
- Do you think that a fraud of this kind would be just?1.7 Part 1 Chapter 7 — The Exploiters and the Exploited (85% in)
- There were evenings when she noticed the faint contraction of anger in the tightness of his mouth, as he signed the expected names of the expected fraud, anger at those who made fraud necessary.1.9 Part 1 Chapter 9 — The Sacred and the Profane (73% in)
- There were evenings when she noticed the faint contraction of anger in the tightness of his mouth, as he signed the expected names of the expected fraud, anger at those who made fraud necessary.1.9 Part 1 Chapter 9 — The Sacred and the Profane (73% in)
- ...money into unknown hands in exchange for unsupported promises, into unsigned, unrecorded loans to dummy owners of failing minesmoney handed and taken furtively, as an exchange between criminals, in anonymous cash; money poured into unenforceable contracts-both parties knowing that in case of fraud, the defrauded was to be punished, not the defrauder-but poured that a stream of ore might continue flowing into furnaces, that the furnaces might continue to pour a stream of white metal.1.10 Part 1 Chapter 10 — Wyatt's Torch (23% in)
- The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud-he was guilty of them all.1.10 Part 1 Chapter 10 — Wyatt's Torch (25% in)
- So you tell people that science is a futile fraud which ought to be abolished!2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (20% in)
- It's some sort of fraud, very ancient and very vast-and the key to break it is: to check every premise they teach us, to question every precept, to-"2.1 Part 2 Chapter 1 — The Man Who Belonged on Earth (98% in)
- The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (75% in)
- Did you get your money by fraud?2.2 Part 2 Chapter 2 — The Aristocracy of Pull (76% in)
- A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.2.3 Part 2 Chapter 3 — White Blackmail (7% in)
- But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises-because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (84% in)
- You're the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love-and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool's self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one's code of values.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (87% in)
- Observe the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (88% in)
- If you want to defeat any kind of vicious fraud-comply with it literally, adding nothing of your own to disguise its nature.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (91% in)
- People with pleading eyes and desperate faces crowded into tents where evangelists cried in triumphant gloating that man was unable to cope with nature, that his science was a fraud, that his mind was a failure, that he was reaping punishment for the sin of pride, for his confidence in his own intellect-and that only faith in the power of mystic secrets could protect him from the fissure of a rail or from the blowout of the last tire on his last truck.2.5 Part 2 Chapter 5 — Account Overdrawn (9% in)
- She could have borne it, if they had merely let her question go unanswered; but what made her feel a sickening tightness in her stomach, was their double fraud of pretending to ignore her and then answering in their own kind of manner.2.5 Part 2 Chapter 5 — Account Overdrawn (27% in)
- "Gentlemen," she said, "I do not know by what sort of self-fraud you expect to feel that if it's I who name the decision you intend to make, it will be I who'll bear the responsibility for it.2.5 Part 2 Chapter 5 — Account Overdrawn (37% in)
- By every standard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud.2.5 Part 2 Chapter 5 — Account Overdrawn (95% in)
- My crime was committed when I said to her, "By every standard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud.2.6 Part 2 Chapter 6 — Miracle Metal (96% in)
- To work-on a blank check held by every creature born, by men whom you'll never see, whose needs you'll never know, whose ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn and no right to question —just to work and work and work-and leave it up to the Ivys and the Geralds of the world to decide whose stomach will consume the effort, the dreams and the days of your life.2.10 Part 2 Chapter 10 — The Sign of the Dollar (39% in)
- That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.3.1 Part 3 Chapter 1 — Atlantis (85% in)
- ...longing, accepting, as relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection, plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on earth-Francisco, struggling in the elusive fog of a counterfeit reality, his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness, struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a...3.2 Part 3 Chapter 2 — The Utopia of Greed (73% in)
- The fraudulent weapon of sarcasm now seemed to sound less effective than ever, but it was Dr. Stadler's only weapon: "Why did you find it necessary to send me messages on official stationery worded in a style proper, I'm sure, for Army"-orders, he was about to say, but didn't-"communications, but certainly not for scientific correspondence?"3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (1% in)
- For one instant, while he felt the muscles of his face cracking into the fraud of a smile, he felt a formless, an almost supernatural terror, as if he sensed again the silent working of some smooth machine, as if he were caught in it, part of it and doing its irrevocable will.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (9% in)
- At a signal from Wesley Mouch, his voice boomed suddenly over the prairie, an unctuous, fraudulently solemn voice magnified by the microphone inventor's ingenuity into the sound and power of a giant: "Ladies and gentlemen ....3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (11% in)
- She caught brief snatches of fraudulent voices talking about some sort of new invention that was to bring some undefined benefits to some undefined public's welfare.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (37% in)
- You have heard it said that I believe that this system has depravity as its motive, plunder as its goal, lies, fraud and force as its method, and destruction as its only result.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (75% in)
- 1 accepted their insults, their frauds, their extortions.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (89% in)
- This way, it's not necessary to argue about what she said-and if anybody brings it up, we start howling that it was said on Scudder's program and that Scudder's programs have been discredited and that Scudder is a proven fraud and liar, etc., etc. -and do you think the public will be able to unscramble it?3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (19% in)
- ...they discussed-the art shows, where she saw the kind of drawings she had seen chalked on any pavement of her childhood's slums-the novels, that purported to prove the futility of science, industry, civilization and love, using language that her father would not have used in his drunkenest moments-the magazines, that propounded cowardly generalities, less clear and more stale than the sermons for which she had condemned the preacher of the slum mission as a mealy-mouthed old fraud.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (26% in)
- "For the better, of course," he answered impatiently, as if it were irrelevant; his voice seemed to lose its fire and to slip into the fraudulent sound of duty.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (31% in)
- And realizing that part of her zeal to believe was her fear to know, she set out to learn the truth, with a cleaner, calmer sense of Tightness than the effort at dutiful self-fraud had ever given her.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (36% in)
- Her voice had a tone he had never earned before, the tone of an emotion which he had drawn from people only by fraud, but which now, for the first time, was granted with full awareness to the real, the actual nature of his deed: a tone of admiration.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (76% in)
- It was not the smooth skin that attracted his glance, not the exposed rise of her breasts, but the fraud of the safety pin beyond the edge.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (80% in)
- But she would work, she thought, and the harder she worked, the more malevolence she would draw from the people around her, and she would not know when truth would be expected of her and when a lie, but the stricter her honesty, the greater the fraud she would be asked to suffer at their hands.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (92% in)
- He watched them utter mechanical generalities, recite vague phrases of fraudulent evidence, play an intricate game of stretching words to convey no facts and no meaning.3.5 Part 3 Chapter 5 — Their Brothers' Keepers (43% in)
- ...on the afterglow of the minds of others, offering their denial of the mind as their only claim to distinction, and a craving to control the world as their only lust-she, the woman hanger-on of that elite, wearing their shopworn sneer as her answer to the universe, holding impotence as superiority and emptiness as virtue-he, unaware of their hatred, innocently scornful of their posturing fraud-she, seeing him as the danger to their world, as a threat, as a challenge, as a reproach.3.6 Part 3 Chapter 6 — The Concerto of Deliverance (32% in)
- Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a thinking being-not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means of achievement-not survival at any price, since there's only one price that pays for man's survival: reason.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (19% in)
- Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (20% in)
- 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 become the enemies you have to dread and...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (26% in)
- Whenever you rebel against causality, your motive is the fraudulent desire, not to escape it, but worse: to reverse it.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (53% in)
- 'It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure-as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (71% in)
- The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of 'human rights' versus 'property rights,' as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (89% in)
- The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (90% in)
- Force is all they know, force, fraud and plunder!3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (85% in)
- The most fraudulent part of the fraud was that they meant it.3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (96% in)
- The most fraudulent part of the fraud was that they meant it.3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (96% in)
- It was not his incommunicable soul or his love for others or his social duty or any of the fraudulent sounds by which he had maintained his self-esteem: it was the lust to destroy whatever was living, for the sake of whatever was not.3.9 Part 3 Chapter 9 — The Generator (93% in)
There are no more uses of "fraudulent" in Atlas Shrugged.
Typical Usage
(best examples)