These hypocrisy quotes will inspire you. Hypocrisy, the behavior of people who do things that they tell other people not to do, or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging hypocrisy quotes, hypocrisy sayings, and hypocrisy proverbs.
Best Hypocrisy Quotes
- “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “Hypocrisy is the audacity to preach integrity from a den of corruption.” ~ Wes Fesler
- “The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” ~ Andre Gide , Lies & hypocrisy quotes
- “The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!” ~ Tennessee Williams
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” ~ Socrates
- “People are very inclined to set moral standards for others.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “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
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
- “When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.” ~ Thomas Paine
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“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” ~ Frederick William Robertson
- “The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.” ~ Jane Addams
- “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.” ~ William Hazlitt
- “Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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“Clean your finger before you point at my spots.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
- “Live truth instead of professing it.” ~ Elbert Hubbard
- “There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.” ~ Oscar Wilde , Life hypocrisy quotes
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“Whatever you condemn, you have done yourself.” ~ Georg Groddeck
- “Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
- “It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.” ~ Alfred Adler
- “It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.” ~ Charles Caleb Colton
- “A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
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“Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.” ~ Hannah Arendt
- “As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and 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
- “There’s a lot more hypocrisy than before. Racism has gone back underground.” ~ Richard Pryor
- “No task is more difficult than systematic hypocrisy.” ~ Edward George, Baron George
- “All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.” ~ Theodore Hesburgh
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“Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy.” ~ Christine Keeler
- “A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.” ~ William Hazlitt
- “We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” ~ e. e. cummings
- “People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy.” ~ Democritus
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“It is easy for men to talk one thing and think another.” ~ Publilius Syrus
- “Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.” ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin
- “The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.” ~ Paul Wellstone
- “It has been the political career of this man, to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt” ~ Thomas Paine
- “Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.” ~ Martin Luther
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“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Jesus reserved his hardest words for the hidden sins of hypocrisy, pride, greed, and legalism.” ~ Philip Yancey
- “Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
- “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
- “I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a “surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow.” … Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.” ~ Edward Abbey
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“Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite” ~ William Hazlitt
- “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” ~ Mark Twain
- “Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke
- “Be as you wish to seem.” ~ Socrates
- “Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty.” ~ Raisa Gorbacheva
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“The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
- “When men think and believe in one set of symbols and act in ways which are contrary to their professed and conscious ideas, confusion and insincerity are bound to result.” ~ John Dewey
- “We are not hypocrites in our sleep.” ~ William Hazlitt
- “You have to live with the people in hypocrisy for them to stay happy with you.” ~ Shams Tabrizi
- “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think, and to speak without hypocrisy.” ~ Jose Marti
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“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.” ~ Moliere
- “For every man’s nature is concealed with many folds of disguise, and covered as it were with various veils. His brows, his eyes, and very often his countenance, are deceitful, and his speech is most commonly a lie.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors.” ~ Moliere
- “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
- “They attack the victim, and then the criminal who attacked the victim accuses the victim of attacking him. This is American justice. This is American democracy and those of you who are familiar with it know that in America democracy is hypocrisy. Now, if I’m wrong, put me in jail; but if you can’t prove that democracy is not hypocrisy, then don’t put your hands on me.” ~ Malcolm X
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“In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue – is hypocrisy.” ~ Lord Byron
- “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
- “Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics.” ~ Mark McKinnon
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“Those who pretend to know what they don’t will be thought ignorant of even what they know.” ~ Thiruvalluvar
- “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
- “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” ~ Warren W. Wiersbe
