"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 (Life of Pi)

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Conduct of Life)

"I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy."
— Oscar Wilde

"I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas."
— Johnny Cash

"If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Stoic Philosophy of Seneca Essays and Letters)

"Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy."
— Warren Wiersbe

"We often do good in order that we may do evil with impunity."
— Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance."
— D.A. Carson (A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers)

"The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife."
— William Blake

"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"
— O. Henry

"Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time everywhere"
— George W. Bush

"And I may not omit here a special work of God's providence. There was a proud and very profane young man [aboard the Mayflower], one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body, which made him the more haughty; he would always be contemning the poor people in their [sea]sickness, and cursing them daily with grievous execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly.

But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus his curses light on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him."
— William Bradford (Of Plymouth Plantation 1620 - 1647)

"We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires"
— Alfred de Vigny (Stello)