Vaclav Havel Quotes

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

Enough white lies can scorch the earth black.

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

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

He is only honest who is not discovered.

Living on hypocrisy is not a healthy diet for patriots.

All I can say is anybody who's spent most of his life living a lie is not somebody I admire.

I don't lie," I lied.

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.

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

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

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

I am not honest.

I abhor hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

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