Hypocrisy is a game of pretense. It's a lack of honesty. Clearly, Jesus did not abide hypocrites. He expects honesty. He expects straightforwardness, and he expects us to be humble about it all.

Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state.

Actually, we have misdefined "hypocrisy." Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda.

The universal hypocrisy has so entered into the flesh and blood of all classes of our modern society, it has reached such a pitch that nothing in that way can rouse indignation. Hypocrisy in the Greek means "acting," and acting—playing a part—is always possible.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and justice.

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 practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

If you take a poll among U.S. intellectuals, support for bombing Afghanistan is just overwhelming, but how many of them think that you should bomb Washington because of the U.S. war against Nicaragua, let's say, or Cuba or Turkey, or anyone else? Now if anyone were to suggest this, they'd be considered insane, but why? I mean, if one is right, why is the other wrong? When you try to get someone to talk about this question, they just won't try. They can't comprehend what your question is, because you can't comprehend that we should apply to ourselves the standards that you apply to others. That is incomprehensible! There couldn't be a moral principle more elementary... There's a famous definition in the Gospels of the hypocrite. The hypocrite is the person who refuses to apply to himself the standards that he applies to others. By that standard, the entire commentary and discussion of the so-called "war on terror" is pure hypocrisy, virtually without exception. Can anybody understand that? No, can't understand that. But that's not so unusual... I know it was true in Germany and France and everywhere else. It's just standard. It's ugly, but it's standard.

It's basically [about] having to make a decision whether to do nothing or try to engage with it in some way, knowing that it's flawed. It's convenient to project that back on to someone personally and say they're a hypocrite. It's a lot easier to do that than actually do anything else. And yeah, that stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite. As we all are.

— Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

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

The hypocrite may serve, among other things, as a deformed ambassador of the truth. By so obviously misrepresenting the truth, he enables us to trace its smothered outlines.