A hypocrite is someone who professes specific moral convictions, while violating his professions by his actual behavior. A hypocrite resembles, as Charles Dickens tells us, “a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.”
A preacher who condemns prostitution but patronizes prostitutes is a hypocrite, as is a bank president who embezzles from his bank but rages against bank robbers. (more…)