“On December 11, 2009, Tiger Woods announced he would take an indefinite
leave from professional golf to focus on his marriage after he admitted infidility.
His multiple infidelities were revealed by over a dozen mistresses through many worldwide media sources”.
The description of the hypocrite is one who pretends to have “good” intentions while having antagonistic intentions or convictions. It is pretending to be someone you really are not or pretending to be better than someone else. Hypocrisy in one form or another, takes place everyday and everywhere, in our schools, workplaces, government and our churches. It occurs so frequently around us that we have become quite immune to its presence and except for a blatant transgression like Woods’ action, we general accept it without much comment. In truth, there is no denying that often we are, when it suits us, as guilty of hypocrisy as anyone else.
Throughout the ages, hypocrisy has always been the foundation upon which nations have justified their actions in the conquering and domination of their citizens, and other nations. Leaders have been able to reach and survive at the top by successful hypocritical manipulation of their subordinates, and politicians, to a very large extent, have generally survived and prospered by their effective use of hypocrisy.
No institution has been more effective and more successful in the use of hypocrisy as the Religions. History abounds with examples of hypocrisy among all the great religions whose leaders have had no hesitation to use it to further their own causes. Consider the “Inquisitions” conducted by the Roman Catholic Church during the middle ages, when thousands were tortured and burnt at the stakes in the name of stamping out “heretics”. No better, were the Crusaders who in the name of Christianity and the saving of Jerusalem, carried out a ruthless program of rape and destruction of the Moslem countries they conquered.
The Holy Bible contains more references to hypocrisy than almost any other topic. The most famous reference of this is recorded in Matthew 23:24, when Jesus admonished the clerics in the Synagogue thus:
“Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!,
for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted
the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith:
these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel”.
In recent years it appears that hypocrisy has gained even greater popularity, to the point where it has become part of modern day life. It is crying shame when the President of a great nation initiates a war in the name of fighting terrorism by concocting false information. Or a Priest stands on the alter delivering a sermon on the sanctity of the family, while actively involved in the abuse of young parishioners. Or the senior executives of a bank that required a massive infusion of public funds to survive, accepting large bonuses while thousands of home owners are being foreclosed as a result of the executives’ incompetence and immoral actions.
Their actions cry out to heaven for vengeance!
Hannah Arendt, the celebrated German-Jewish philosopher who died in 1973, openly criticized the actions of the hypocrites in the following terms in her publication, On Revolution:
“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,
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”.
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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,
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, "Friendship Essays”
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion
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”.
< >
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,
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, "Friendship Essays”
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion
……..Hosea Ballou.
The only vice that cannot be forgiven is Hypocrisy.
The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.
………William Hazlitt
The true Hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception,
the one who lies with sincerity.
The true Hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception,
the one who lies with sincerity.
………André Gide
Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.
…….François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld,
A Hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree,
then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.
Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.
…….François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld,
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
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises,
for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises,
for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
……Edmund Burke
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