Jackie Gleason Quotes

Excusations, cessions, modesty itself well governed, are but arts of ostentation.

Nothing can be further apart than true humility and servility.

You can't fake creativity, competence, or sexual arousal.

Out of five hundred who speak glibly of love, not one can spell the first letter of his name.

Well, you know what they say in Hollywood - the most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it.

That's what show business is, sincere insincerity.

Oh, I can spot a phoney a mile away.

The hardest thing to do in politics is campaign as someone you aren't. People can spot an imposter from a mile away.

Sincerity is the most important thing in acting. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

I'm not always sincere. One can't be in this world, you know.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

Come on, I know bad acting when I hear it.

Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility.

Always be sincere, whether you mean it or not.

Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!

Do you expect sincerity in man when hypocrisy is the very keynote of human nature? We are nurtured on it; we are schooled in it, we live by it; and we rarely realize it.’ – Book 3, Chapter 16

Modesty is the delicate form of hypocrisy.

And you don't have to care, so don't pretend. Nobody needs a best fake friend.

I don't like it when someone can look you in the eye and lie to you, or pretend that they're more than you.

This is an example of hypocrisy

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is a nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.