Hypocrite quotes
338 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"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. He does not want to be holy; he only wants to seem to be holy. He is more concerned with his reputation for righteousness than about actually becoming righteous. The approbation of men matters more to him than the approval of God."
"Those who make use of devotion as a means and end generally are hypocrites."
"In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites."
"People who repress desires often turn, suddenly, into hypocrites."
"The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it."
"Never value anything as profitable to thyself which shall compel thee to break thy promise, to lose thy self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"When you find me attempting to break into your house to take your plate, under any pretence whatsoever, but most of all under pretence of purity of religion and Christian charity shoot me for a robber and a hypocrite, as in that case I shall certainly be."
"A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face."
"And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
"Hypocrites always wanna play innocent"
"We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom."
"I can't be a hypocrite as a coach because as a player that's what I wanted. I wanted feedback, I wanted communication from the boss. I showed up for work, you can yell at me if you want, but I want input. So that's the kind of coach I want to be."
"Whether a Commonwealth suffers more by hypocritical pretenders to religion or by the openly profane? The most dangerous hypocrite in a Commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law."
"No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."
"Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is."
"What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?"
"Think nothing profitable to you which compels you to break a promise, to lose your self respect, to hate any person, to curse, to act the hypocrite."
"[David] Mamet is another hypocrite. His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond], yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San Francisco's ACT."
"A man who shows no defect is a fool or a hypocrite, whom we should mistrust. There are defects so bound to fine qualities that they announce them,--defects which it is well not to correct."
