Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

most of us have to be self-righteous before we can be righteous.

People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority.

The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted.

Beware of self-righteousness. The black devil of licentiousness destroys his hundreds, but the white devil of self-righteousness destroys his thousands.

Am I self-righteous? Why not? It's not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.

Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.

There is no sinner like a young saint.

Our virtues are most frequently but vices disguised.

Little evil would be done in the world if evil never could be done in the name of good.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.

We are living in a sanctimonious age.

Sinners think they are saints, but saints know they are sinners.

A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to Hell than a prostitute.

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.

Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse.

There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality.

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.

Self-righteousness is unavoidable. You can either be a self-righteous Pharisee where you think you are better than everyone else or you can be a self-righteous pagan who thinks you are better than the Pharisee. If you are a self-righteous person, I could become very self-righteous thinking that you're self-righteous and you think you're so good but I know you're bad. I know I'm bad so that makes me better than you.

The worst form of badness is human goodness when human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth.

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.

Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.

moral vanity is the snare of good people.

The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.