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Hypocrisy is pretending to be more virtuous or moral than you are

• Hypocrisy: The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.  Oxford Dictionary
• Hypocrisy: Behavior that does not agree with what someone claims to believe or feel.  Merriam Webster
• 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. Oscar Wilde
• The core problem of hypocrisy is that it precludes the accurate appraisal of moral worth, privileging appearance over reality. Ronald C. Naso
• Hypocrites act by virtue…. They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application. Charles Caleb Colton
• Virtue,  Morality and ethics,  Dishonesty,  Integrity,  Honesty,  Integrity,  Being who you are

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Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue

• Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.  Moliere
• Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue. Francois De La Rochefoucauld
• All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.  Theodore M. Hesburgh
• As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. William Hazlitt
• Vice

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Hypocrisy is prejudice with a halo

• Hypocrisy: Prejudice with a halo. Ambrose Bierce
• Hypocrisy is the mother of all evil and racial prejudice is still her favourite child. Don King
• Prejudice

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Hypocrisy is putting on a false front and being two faced

• Away, and mock the time with fairest show; False face must hide what the false heart doth khow. William Shakespeare
• God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.  William Shakespeare
• I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn’t know who I was or wanted to be. Milan Kunder
• Often a noble face hides filthy ways. Euripides
• Our masks are intact, grown into faces and we will alight at different places. Marilyn Noronha
• He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. George Orwell

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Hypocrisy is hiding what you really are

• It is easier to pretend to be what you are not, than to hide what you really are; he that can accomplish both, has little to learn in hypocrisy. Charles Caleb Colton
• The hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against himself. Hannah Arendt

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Hypocrisy is not living in accordance with the beliefs you profess

• He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.  Thomas Fuller
• He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves. William Hazlitt
• 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
• It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. Thomas Paine
• Tis curious that we only believe as deeply as we live. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Belief

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Hypocrisy is going to church on Sunday, then being rotten during the week

• Another little phase of everyday life that might be amusing if it were not so pathetic is the pious way some old skinflint whose specialty is foreclosing widows’ mortgages can act in church. Robert Elliott Gonzales
• Of what benefit is it to say our prayers regularly, go to church, receive the sacraments, and maybe go to confessions too; ay, feast the priest, and give alms to the poor, and yet lie, swear, curse, be drunk, covetous, unclean, proud, revengeful, vain and idle at the same time? William Penn
• Your religion is what you do when the sermon is over.   Jackson Brown, Jr.

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Hypocrisy is not practising what you preach

• 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 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
• You talk one way, you live another. Seneca The Younger
• They play one tune and dance to another. John Clarke

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Hypocrisy is obsessing on the faults of others without examining your own

• And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Matthew 7:3  Bible
• Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Jesus (Matthew 7:3)
• Clean your finger before you point at my spots. Benjamin Franklin
• Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.  William Shakespeare
• How can I clearly see what’s wrong with someone else, and then look at myself as though I’m standing in front of a fogged mirror? Jarod Kintz
• How seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance as ourselves.  Thomas à Kempis
• Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others. Moliere
• Whatever you condemn, you have done yourself.  Georg Groddeck
• The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available. Theodor W. Adorno

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Hypocrisy is being intent on changing others, rather than yourself

• Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Mark Twain
• 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
• I don’t never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks’ straight is what bothers me. Josh Billings
• Change

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Hypocrisy is setting different standards for yourself and others

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

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Hypocrisy is looking good on the outside but being rotten on the inside

• An immoral character, glossed with religious pretention, is like a rotten egg with an Easter coloring. Lewis F. Korns
• A man I knew who lived upon a smile, And well it fed him; he look’d plump and fair, While rankest venom foam’d through every vein. Edward Young

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Hypocrisy is serving the devil in a heavenly outfit

• He was a man Who stole the livery of the court of Heaven To serve the devil in. Robert Pollok
• If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others and receive no wages. Charles Caleb Colton

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Some label hypocrisy as one of the most detestable vices of all …

• I hate that man like the very Gates of Death who says one thing but hides another in his heart. Homer
• 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
• The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite! Tennessee Williams
• The only vice which cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. William Hazlitt
• Vice

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… a vice that is bad for the soul and a cause of much evil in the world…

• Hypocrisy is a subtle evil, a secret illness, a hidden poison; it is an adulteration of virtue and a worm that consumes sanctity. All things hostile mount their assault with their own strength, fight with their own arms, and attack openly. They are guarded against as easily as they are seen. Hypocrisy pretends to be free of danger, feigns prosperity, deceives carefully, and in its cruel craft lops off the virtues with virtue as its sword; it kills fasting by fasting, by praying it makes praying empty, and it debases mercy by mercy. Hypocrisy, like a fever, boils up within while being cold without. What dropsy is for the body, hypocrisy is for the soul. Peter Chrysologus
• Hypocrisy is the mother of all evil and racial prejudice is still her favourite child. Don King
• Hypocrisy, the lie, is the true sister of evil, intolerance, and cruelty. Raisa M. Gorbachev
• The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals. Aldous Huxley
• Evil

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… a vice that is worse than the sin it condemns

• Better to be known as a sinner than a hypocrite. Proverb
• How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite. Voltaire
• Sin

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However, the truth is that most of us are hypocrites to some degree by pretending to be what we’re not …

• All humans are hypocrites; the biggest hypocrite of all is the one who claims to detest hypocrisy. Peter Wastholm
• We are all hypocrites. We cannot see ourselves or judge ourselves the way we see and judge others. José Emilio Pachec

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… even if we’re just being falsely humble or modest

• Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change. Frank Lloyd Wright
• Humility is the highest of all virtues. You can destroy your egotism by developing this virtue alone.  You can influence people.  You can become a magnet to attract the world.  It must be genuine.  Feigned humility is hypocrisy.  Robert Collier
• If, when stung by slander or ill-nature, we wax proud and swell with anger, it is a proof that our gentleness and humility are unreal, and mere artificial show. St. François de Sales
• With people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. Arthur Schopenhauer
• Modesty,  Humility

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There is an argument that in some ways hypocrisy helps hold society together ….

• All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another’s presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best. Henry
• Hypocrisy is the lubricant of society. David Hull
• Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together. Scott Meyer

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… with false politeness being the glue

• Man is the only animal that learns by being hypocritical. He pretends to be polite and then, eventually, he becomes polite. Jean Kerr
• Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation. Honore de Balzac
• Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.  Ambrose Bierce
• Politeness and courtesy

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Hypocrisy often flourishes in religious circles

• Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion. Mahatma Gandhi
• It is hypocrisy for man to make any other use of his religion, or the credit of it, than to sanctify and save his soul. Benjamin Whichcote
• Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste. George Bernard Shaw
• When you see a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend on it, that he keeps a very small stock of it within. C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon
• Those who worship through the various religions should not be criticized but encouraged. In all religions rests a grain of truth for the masses. It is a form which the masses can comprehend, no matter how erroneous it may be. As long as those individuals attempt to live their religion, instead of a life of hypocrisy, they are seekers and we cannot look down our noses at them. Richard Rose
• The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it. Minna Antrim
• The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility. Anaïs Nin
• These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy…walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, ‘Business as usual.’ But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. Yann Martel
• Religion

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Hypocrisy flourishes in political circles too

• I think that generally one of the things that—one of the things that I sort of feel like is the meta issue in the type of political commentary that I do is that nobody really cares about hypocrisy—everybody expects hypocrisy from politicians. And so, you tell a politician they are being a hypocrite, and they say, oh, you have such a nasty tune, stop saying those rude things, because they don‘t care about the substance of it. Rachel Maddow
• Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place. Alan Dershowitz
• Politics

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There is no doubt that hypocrisy comes at a price

• Happiness and joy always eludes a hypocrite. Sam Veda
• If we divine a discrepancy between a man’s words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted. Charles Horton Cooley
• 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
• Some people’s blameless lives are to blame for a good deal. Dorothy L. Sayers

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Hypocrisy corrodes self-respect

• 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
• Hypocrisy is the outward acknowledgment of inward shame. Norman Macdonald
• Self-respect

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Hypocrisy never attains permanent greatness

• Those are greatly mistaken who think that they can obtain permanent glory by hypocrisy, vain pretence, and disguised words and looks. True glory strikes its roots deep and spreads them on all sides; everything false disappears quickly, like spring flowers, nor can anything, that is untrue, be of long duration. Cicero
• Greatness

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Hypocrisy hates nothing more than to be exposed …

• Every veil secretly desires to be lifted, except the veil of Hypocrisy. Richard Garnett

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… and therefore, is constantly enslaved by its own pretences

• Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job. William Somerset Maugham

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Hypocrisy can hide itself from all, but God is no dupe …

• For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heav’n and earth. John Milton
• He that puts on a religious habit abroad to gain himself a great name among men, and at the same time lives like an atheist at home, shall at the last be uncovered by God and presented before all the world for a most outrageous hypocrite. Thomas Brooks
• God

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… even if the hypocrite is

• 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
• If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others, and receive no wages. Charles Caleb Colton

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True hypocrisy is so taken in by its own sincerity that it doesn’t even know itself

• We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. G. K. Chesterton
• The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity. Andre Gide

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Transcend hypocrisy by putting your creed into your deed

• Go put your creed into your deed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.  William Shakespeare
• There should be no disagreement between our lives and our doctrines. Publius Syrus

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Transcend hypocrisy but putting up a mirror to your own faults

• Hypocrisy annoys me, people need to look into mirrors. Let me hold a mirror in front of your face. C. JoyBell C.
• How can I clearly see what’s wrong with someone else, and then look at myself as though I’m standing in front of a fogged mirror? Jarod Kintz

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Transcend hypocrisy by having the courage to be who you really are

• Hypocrisy is folly; for it is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man seems to appear, than to keep up the appearance of being what he is not. Lord Burleigh
• Courage,  Be who you are

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Transcend hypocrisy by never prohibiting others from doing what you do

• Prohibit not something to others which you permit to yourself. Talmud

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Transcending hypocrisy brings benefits

• If you really seek to understand, without hypocrisy and without guile, there will be times when you will be literally stunned with the pure knowledge and understanding that will flow to you from another human being. Sephen R. Covey
• If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. Carl Jung

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Hypocrisy always requires company for it to truly come out of its shell

• 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
• How do men feel whose whole lives (and many men’s lives are) are lies, schemes, and subterfuges? What sort of company do they keep when they are alone? Daily in life I watch men whose every smile is an artifice, and every wink is a hypocrisy. Doth such a fellow where a mask in his own privacy, and to his own conscience? William Makepeace Thackeray

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Encourage your children to remain real and not fall into hypocritical ways

• Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality.  Mignon McLaughlin
• … the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance. D.A. Carson
• Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

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Beware of those who pretend to be what they are not

• Whenever a man undergoes a considerable change, in consequence of being observed by others, whenever he assumes another gait, another language, than what he had before he thought himself observed, be advised to guard yourself against him. Johann Caspar Lavater
• Trust him with none of thy individualities who is, or pretends to be, two things at once. Johann Caspar Lavater
• The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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More definitions of hypocrisy

• Hypocrisy: The moment you tell someone it is not important to be right, in order to look right to everyone else. Shannon L. Alder
• Hypocrite: The man who murdered both his parents… pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.   Abraham Lincoln
• Hypocrisy: Prejudice with a halo. Ambrose Bierce

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• 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 man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain. Oscar Wilde
• Hypocrites kick with their hind feet while licking with their tongues. Russian Proverb
• I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. Oscar Wilde
• I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said. William F. Buckley Jr.
• 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
• How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say. Oscar Wilde
• Courtesy: Acceptable hypocrisy.
• A bunch of money-grubbin’ greenhouse-gassing seal-clubbing oil-drilling Bible-thumping missile-firing right-to-life-ing lethal-injecting hypocrites whose idea of a good time is strapping a dead panda to a Lincoln Navigator and running over everybody in the gay parade.  Richard Jeni
• A Conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.  Benjamin Disraeli
• A hypocrite is a person who – but who isn’t?  Don Marquis
• Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of social intercourse.  Newman’s Law
• Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.  Ambrose Bierce

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