Cynic frankness (parrhēsia)

Diogenes practised parrhēsia, frank speech: telling the useful truth without servility, even before the powerful. The rule is, in those moments when you would be tempted to please, to say what is true and useful rather than what flatters, so as to deflate a pretension or an illusion. Today it is an antidote to the flattery and conformism that make us silence what matters.