My favorite line about hypocrisy (another idea that gets a bum rap) is by La Rouchefoucauld, “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” In The De-moralization of Society, Gertrude Himmelfarb skillfully employed this notion to show the moral advantage that Victorian morals had on modern culture — they may not have behaved, but at least they acknowledged how they ought to behave.
