Quotations about Hypocrisy

One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others. ~Moliere


Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Friendship," Essays, 1841


He does not believe who does not live according to his belief. ~Thomas Fuller


Whatever you condemn, you have done yourself. ~Georg Groddeck, The Book of the It, 1950


Many of us believe that wrongs aren't wrong if it's done by nice people like ourselves. ~Author Unknown


Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. ~William Shakespeare, Henry VI


As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints. ~Charles Caleb Colton


All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for. ~Logan Pearsall Smith


The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself. ~Jane Addams


That which we call sin in others is experiment for us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Experience," Essays, 1844


All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance. ~Theodore M. Hesburgh


Go put your creed into your deed. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The most melancholy thing about human nature, is, that a man may guide others into the path of salvation, without walking in it himself; that he may be a pilot, and yet a castaway. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911


Hypocrite: the man who murdered both his parents... pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan. ~Abraham Lincoln


'Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I don't never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks' straight is what bothers me. ~Josh Billings


If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners - let us thank heaven for hypocrisy. ~Aldous Huxley


Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. ~H.G. Wells


Affectation is a greater enemy to the face than smallpox. ~English Proverb


The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scales. ~Aesop, Fables


The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. ~Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, 1963


Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is. ~Rebecca West, The Strange Necessity, 1928


Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar for 1894


In the last analysis we must be judged by what we do and not by what we believe. We are as we behave - with a very small margin of credit for our unmanifested vision of how we might behave if we could take the trouble. ~Geoffrey L. Rudd, The British Vegetarian, September/October 1962


It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. ~William Shakespeare


The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs, of his neighbor. ~Benjamin Franklin


Most everyone seems willing to be a fool himself, but he can't bear to have anyone else one. ~Josh Billings


They are not all saints who use holy water. ~English Proverb


The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. ~André Gide


God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. ~William Shakespeare


How seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance as ourselves. ~Thomas à Kempis



We are not hypocrites in our sleep. ~William Hazlitt


Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


When you say that you agree with a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice. ~Otto von Bismarck


Hypocrite reader - my fellow - my brother! ~St Jerome


Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom. ~Aldous Huxley


When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. ~George Bernard Shaw


The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers. ~James Russell Lowell


It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. ~Alfred Adler


Live truth instead of professing it. ~Elbert Hubbard


Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors. ~Jean Baptiste Molière, Tartuffe


Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts. ~Laurence Sterne, 1760


Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street. ~Elbert Hubbard


Saying is one thing, doing another. We must consider the sermon and the preacher distinctly and apart. ~Montaigne, Essays, 1588


We are irritated by rascals, intolerant of fools, and prepared to love the rest. But where are they? ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one. ~J. Pierpoint Morgan


History is the chronicle of divorces between creed and deed. ~Louis Fischer


Throughout our lives, we see in the mirror the same innocent trusting face we have seen there since childhood. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state. ~Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You


People are very inclined to set moral standards for others. ~Elizabeth Drew, The New Yorker, 16 February 1987


A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night. ~Thomas Macaulay


We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and another which we practice but seldom preach. ~Bertrand Russell


Few love to hear the sins they love to act. ~William Shakespeare


He rightly reads scripture who turns words into deeds. ~Saint Bernard of Clairvaux


People will disapprove of you if you're unhappy, or if you're happy in The Wrong Way. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots. ~J. Petit-Senn


The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. ~Socrates


Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. ~Jacob M. Braude


Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue. ~François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 1678


A great deal of what passes for current Christianity consists in denouncing other people's vices and faults. ~Henry H. Williams


I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end... I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me. ~Abraham Lincoln


The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others. ~Author Unknown


How many observe Christ's birthday! How few his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
~Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757


Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter