Hypocrisy Quotes

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

My only policy is to profess evil and do good.

Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.

You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter;but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! What a world!

I speak of peace, while covert enmity under the smile of safety wounds the world

Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.

An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?

Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.

It is not the being seen of men that is wrong, but doing these things for the purpose of being seen of men. The problem with the hypocrite is his motivation.

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ, "Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered. JOHN LOCKE, Some Thoughts Concerning Education However wicked men may be, they do not dare openly to appear the enemies of virtue, and when they desire to persecute her they either pretend to believe her false or attribute crimes to her.

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of ungraceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.

Can there be greater foolishness than the respect you pay to people collectively when you despise them individually?

There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.

Every man has a bag hanging before him, in which he puts his neighbour's faults, and another behind him in which he stows his own.

What would we say if the Chinese sent a gunboat with their marines up the Mississippi River claiming they were protecting their laundries in Memphis?

The English are a nation of consummate cant.

You know That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard, And after scandal them.

Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.

The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.

Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstone of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might have lain forever undiscovered.

...But we enjoyed playing games and were punished for them by men who played games themselves. However, grown-up games are known as 'business' and even though boys' games are much the same, they are punished for them by their elders. No one pities either the boys or the men, though surely we deserve pity, for I cannot believe that a good judge would approve of the beatings I received as a boy on the ground that my games delayed my progress in studying subjects which would enable me to play a less creditable game later in life.

Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

With all our crime and all our immorality ... and about as much contentment and respose as a fresh-caged hyena, we go to tell the whole world: we are the only one with the right idea!

Nothing ought in reason to mortify our self-satisfaction more that the considering that we condemn at one time what we highly approve and commend at another.

Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins

I wish to become rich, so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little, like those kind hearted, fat, benevolent people do.

Idleness and fear keeps us in the path of duty, but our virtue often gets the praise.

It is often laziness and timidity that keep us within our duty while virtue gets all the credit.

Some people have read a few Marxist books and think themselves quite learned but what they have read has not penetrated, has not struck root in their minds, so that they do not know how to use it and their class feelings remain as of old. Others are very conceited and having learned some book-phrases, think them terrific and are very cocky; but whenever a storm blows up, they take a stand very different from that of the workers and the majority of the peasants. They waver while the latter stand firm, they equivocate while the latter are forthright.

Don't be evil is a load of crap.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.

There are some upon this earth of yours,' returned the Spirit, 'who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

He has no other recommendation, save an assumed and crafty solemnity of demeanour.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.

I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping!

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

In our interactions with people, a benevolent hypocrisy is frequently required--acting as though we do not see through the motivesof their actions.

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.

No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home."

There are men whose language is strong and defying enough, yet their eyes and their actions ask leave of other men to live.

Bill Clinton does not inhale marijuana, right? You bet. Like I chew on LSD but I don't swallow it.'

The qualities we have, make us so ridiculous as those which we affect.

We should only affect compassion, and carefully avoid having any.

Many of them who belong to these countries that were former colonial powers have racist attitudes, but their racist attitude is never displayed to the degree that the America's attitude of racism is displayed. Never.

What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren?

We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.

We endeavor to make a virtue of the faults we are unwilling to correct.

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Men who sit back and pride themselves on their culture haven't any to speak of.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.