Moral Posturing Quotes

Guilt is also a way for us to express to others that we are a person of good conscience. 'I feel really guilty about getting drunk last night,' we say, when in actual fact we feel no guilt whatsoever or, at least, we could choose to feel no guilt. When people say to me, 'I drank too much last night,' I always reply, 'I drank exactly the right amount.

A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

Canting hypocrisy

Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience.

People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

There is as much vanity in self-scourgings as in self-justification.

I'm not a virtue signaler.

The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

The ideological posturing, moral nitpicking, and clique formation that occur in places such as academic Twitter have more to do with crafting a scene than building a movement. And scholars, of all people, should be able to recognize these dynamics, call them into question, and make more reasonable decisions about how to engage with their colleagues, whether in agreement or debate.

I'd sooner live among people who don't cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards.

I'm always suspicious of people who repent of other people's sins.

When people say 'I'm not a prude, but ...' what they mean is 'I am a prude, and ...'.

Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.

Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.

Every major power always seeks to justify its action on moral grounds. Such behaviour is almost as old as the hills. The west has been a particularly vigorous exponent of this credo; and there is no reason to believe that China, for example, will be any different. But behind the moral rhetoric invariably lies interest and ideology.

The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.

Morality is the least of my concerns. To me, morality in a society that - however moral its pose - is hierarchically organized is simply a lie, an alibi for the inequalities that exist in society.

I'm a little tired of people who have very big moral positions and very small power in reality.

I am suspicious of guilt in myself and in other people; it is usually a way of not thinking, or of announcing one's own fine sensibilities the better to be rid of them fast.

Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings.

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

He who talks much about virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspected; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching there will be little almsgiving.