Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially: the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion

It is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches, it is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

 

“The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.” 

Michael Korda

 

“Only crime and the criminal … confront us with … radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”

Hannah Arendt

 

“We have, in fact, 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

 

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity” 

Andre Gide

 

“Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion” 

Mahatma Gandhi

 

“Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo” 

Ambrose Bierce

 

“Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing” 

Edmund Burke

 

“How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! How horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.”  

Voltaire

“A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.”

Adlai E. Stevenson

 

“A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Disraeli

 

“The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.”

Minna Antrim

 

“Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings.”

Howard Dean

 

“Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power” Carl Jung

 

“A little less hypocrisy and a little more self-knowledge can only have good results … for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures” 

Carl Jung

 

"So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience tells them it is wrong.”

Walter Bagehot

 

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.

Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious."

Aristotle 

“Morality becomes hypocrisy if it means accepting mothers' suffering or dying in connection with unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions and unwanted children.”

Gro Harlem Brundtland

 

“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.”

Frederick William Robertson

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