Archibald Alexander Quotes

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

We have a Sunday code and a weekday code. We preach good and practice evil. We clothe the wolf of our actions in the sheep's clothing of our beautiful phrases.

Of all things in the world that stink in the nostrils of men, hypocrisy is the worst.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface.

The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

Hypocrisy needs to be called out in American politics, and the absurd has reached the point where it is just insufferable.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

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.

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

Hypocrisy is a detriment to progress. There's always a hidden agenda.

Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse.

The moral state of society was most terrible. We stole from ourselves, took and gave bribes, lied in the reports, in newspapers, from high podiums. And all of this from top to bottom; from bottom to top.

I cannot adequately express the horror I feel for a man who can be so base as to veil his hypocrisy under the cloak of religion, and state the base falsehood he has done.

I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.

Combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those who have long practised perfidy grow faithless to each other.

Lying is a most disgraceful vice; it first despises God, and then fears men.