Slavoj Zizek Quotes

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times.

Everybody is a hypocrite. You can't live on this planet without being a hypocrite.

He [William Gladstone] made his conscience not his guide but his accomplice.

I fully embrace myself as a hypocrite.

Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave: the best and the worst are only approximations of those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself: Who are those that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quan∣tum of congruities and incongruities.

One must live the way one thinks or end up thinking the way one has lived.

We're all slight hypocrites who fall short of our ideals.

Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

A little hypocrisy is better than losing.

There's a gigantic gray area between good moral behavior and outright felonious activities. I call that the Weasel Zone and it's where most of life happens.

I think I wear my hypocrisy on my sleeve. I would never say I'm not a complete hypocrite.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.

I had always been feeling uncomfortable in my mind about giving advice to others and not acting upon it myself.

Politics is challenging for everyone's integrity... I have to wake up with myself every morning, and I have to be OK with the person I wake up with. If I string together too many days of waking up with a person I'm not happy to be, I have a lot bigger things at stake in my life than an election or a job.

For a good man fame is always a problem.

What I cannot live with may not bother another man's conscience. The result is that conscience will stand against conscience.

But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes dishonest.

Many an honest man practices upon himself an amount of deceit sufficient, if practised upon another, and in a little different way, to send him to the state prison.