Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

No power can be maintained when it is only represented by hypocrites.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

I abhor hypocrisy.

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

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Why do we go around acting as though everything was friendship and reliability when basically everything everywhere is full of sudden hate and ugliness?

When I saw corruption, I was forced to find truth on my own. I couldn't swallow the hypocrisy.

Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.

It might be said that the pose of absolute honesty is the most dishonest one of all.

We're against hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, show business, insincerity, phonies, and fakers.

I have little time for sincerity.

I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of 'living a lie'. I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable.

If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.

I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.

Should we become so proficient at self-presentation that we can dissemble without anyone suspecting?

A new study found that most people can't go 10 minutes without lying. But since the study took 20 minutes nobody knows what to believe.

For the record, I don't expect you to believe any of this. Not really. I'm a liar by trade, after all; albeit, I like to think, an honest liar.

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

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunningsort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others.

It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.

Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it.

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.