Benjamin Franklin Quotes

We all do things at certain points that are contradictory. Some things, it's a smaller contradiction, and other things it's larger.

To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.

Why do you not practice what you preach.

I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!

The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

The Lives of Great Men are more oft' at variance with their profess'd Phillosophies than consistent with 'em.

Hypocrisy is annoying but not evil. Someone who says one thing and does another has doubled their chances of being half right.

I spend some of my time brooding about people who seem addicted to double standards - those who take an allegedly principled stand on a Monday, then switch firmly to the opposite principle on Tuesday if it is to their advantage.

Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.

Yeah, right. I mean, he criticises everybody in the media, then the first thing he does when he finishes is he goes to work for the media. Thompson, too. Hypocritical.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

And I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives.

Be a hypocrite if you like, but don't talk like one.

Men condemne the same things in others, which they approve in themselves; on the other side, they publickly commend what they privately condemne;

At any rate, your contempt for your fellow human beings does not prevent you ... from trying to win their respect.

The best men are not consistent in good--why should the worst men be consistent in evil?

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

I fully embrace myself as a hypocrite.

He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.

I have a lot of beliefs... and I live by none of them...

You can't hoot with the owls and then soar with the eagles

A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism.

It's the old American Double Standard, ya know: Say one thing, do somethin' different. And of course this country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard: This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free.