Quotes about hypocrisy

When people think your days are numbered, they're really very nice to you. It's only when you're trying to get on in the world that they bring their claws out.

“Everyone’s being hypocritical,” she muttered. “Is there anyone around here who doesn’t want something from us while acting innocent? We need to find out what’s really going on before everyone does the wrong thing for the right reasons.”

Indigo was precisely the sort of person who would declare that a just revolution was worth a million deaths. As long as she wasn’t one of them, of course.

His sister had come over here in 1994, and then he'd come himself, to get away from all the trouble over there. Never regretted it. Said this was a fine country except they let in too many immigrants.

It’s like with germ warfare. They weaponise germs for aggression and we say we study weaponised germs purely for defensive purposes. Nobody likes to admit they’re doing it but everybody knows everybody else is doing it.

Every religion I’ve studied has laws or commandments against killing.

Historically, humanity has shown tremendous creativity in finding every possible loophole, rationalization, and justification to ignore these commandments.

I am a pragmatist, said Mab. I do what must be done to make a better world.

“Oh, I’m sure you tell yourself that. But so does the woman who tortured Lilith. You sound exactly like her, in fact. The difference is that Berenice actually means it. She doesn’t use the pretense to justify her cruelty.”

The seventeenth century saw the increased involvement of England, France, and the Netherlands in the Americas and in the slave trade. The eighteenth century followed the same path with a touch of perversity: the more European merchants and mercenaries bought and conquered other men and women, the more European philosophers wrote and talked about Man.

Slavery is an evil of the first magnitude, ... and contrary to all the genuine principles of Christianity, and yet carried on by men denominated thereby.

It had been designed for “peacekeeping,” which meant that it had been fitted out from stem to stern with the most hideous weapons of war that the human mind could conceive.

“Professor Lang’s important work, with all due respect, does not answer that question.”

The knife, sliding in hidden behind the compliment. “With all due respect” meant “with no respect at all.”

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds… I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.