Quotes & Sayings About Holier Than Thou

I suppose we'll behave like a bunch of holier-than-thou hypocrites. Because the alternative is to look at ourselves in the mirror and know that we are capable of dark and terrible things. — Michael Grant

I enjoyed being in 'The Ten Commandments.' That was a great experience - to suddenly become one of those holy people. I was holier than thou. — Yvonne De Carlo

My dick is not moving from where it's lodged, pressed up against the zipper of my jeans. I think her holier-than-thou attitude might have even made it harder.
Clearly, my dick has poor taste in women. — Sabrina Paige

Think of the cold Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, or the monk who tries to eliminate all humor in The Name of the Rose, or the frowning Koran burners of Florida. Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody. — Richard Rohr

God doesn't hate sin because He is holy. He hates sin because He is love. Sin is anything that goes against love. And for God to truly be love He must hate those things that hurt those He cares about. He hates sin because sin hurts you. Not because He has some holier-than-thou ego trip. — Christian Erickson

Did you know that when a guy comes, he comes 200 million sperm? And you're trying to tell me that your child is special because one out of 200 million
that load! we're talking one load!
connected. Gee, what are the fucking odds? 200 million; you know what that means? I have wiped civilizations off my chest with a gray gym sock. That is special. Entire nations have flaked and crusted in the hair around my navel! That is special. And I want you to remember that, you two egg-carrying beings out there, with that holier-than-thou "we have the gift of life" attitude. I've tossed universes ... in my underpants ... while napping! Boom! A milky way shoots into my jockey shorts, "Aaaah, what's for fucking breakfast? — Bill Hicks

I am and always will be a sinner. But that's the beautiful thing about Jesus. I'll always try to be a better person in the eyes of God. But I'm not all of a sudden stepping up on a pedestal and saying I'm holier than thou, 'cause I'm not! — Billy Ray Cyrus

I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: "Things will be better when you die," the people of my grandma's generation said as they worked themselves to death. "God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong," some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, "The rest of y'all are lost because you don't have a personal relationship with God - our God."
But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity. — Wynton Marsalis

I don't even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance. No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians. — Nick Clegg

I'm sure Sting's a lovely guy. It's just that nobody wants to be seen as that holier-than-thou thing. That over-earnestness is a bit of a problem with people in bands and celebrities or whatever. — Jarvis Cocker

Understand that it is often unwise to forgive face to face. This tends to make the other person feel 'put down' and make you look holier-than-thou. — Charles Stanley

You can tell this lady to bite me,though," Darrak added. "And she can take that holier-than-thou attitude of hers and shove it right under her granny panties. — Michelle Rowen

Hollywood amuses me. Holier-than-thou for the public and unholier-than-the-devil in reality — Grace Kelly

I don't belong to a religion. Religion's the reason the world's falling apart ... " That's what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It's a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion's not about being holy," Shay said. "Just holier-than-thou. — Jodi Picoult

Prophecy and history predict and record a great and universal apostasy which was to be followed by a restoration as predicted by John in Revelation. The fact of the great apostasy is attested by both sacred and secular writ, and history bears witness that it became universal. We proclaim this fact of history not as an attack on any church. We do not assume any position of "holier than thou" or "wiser than thou," but we announce this historic fact of the apostasy as a vindication of the claim that there has been in fact a restoration of the gospel. — Hugh B. Brown

I think it's noteworthy that the Almighty didn't act high and mighty. The Holy One wasn't holier-than-thou. The One who knew it all wasn't a know-it-all. The One who made the stars didn't keep his head in them. The One who owns all the stuff of earth never strutted it. — Max Lucado

This is getting us nowhere, he muttered after a moment.
You're absolutely right. So fuck off. Have a nice life, hope all your holier-than-thou keeps you warm during the day. ~ Paradise to Craeg — J.R. Ward

I honestly believe that the counsel I gave Curt was mainly sound, and I don't think too much of it was holier-than-thou. I tried to give him a code to live by. He wanted not one scrap of it, he didn't agree with a single value that I held. — Wallace Stegner

Related to this first reason is the fear that a passion for holiness makes you some kind of weird holdover from a bygone era. As soon as you share your concern about swearing or about avoiding certain movies or about modesty or sexual purity or self-control or just plain godliness, people look at you like you have a moralistic dab of cream cheese on your face from the 1950s. Believers get nervous that their friends will call them legalistic, prudish, narrow-minded, old fashioned, holier-than-thou - or worst of all, a fundamentalist. — Kevin DeYoung

Arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand. — Metallica

Some of the events described in this book may well offend the reader's sensitivities. Part of this was Vimalananda's intention. He wanted Western holier-than-thou renunciates to know that "filth and orgies in the graveyard" (as one American once described Aghori) can be as conducive to spiritual advancement as can asanas, pranayama, and other "purer" disciplines. — Robert E. Svoboda

If God had wanted somebody with St. Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental the most unimitative master he could possibly have picked. And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that - and you do - and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers. — J.D. Salinger

Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates" (p. 695). How do we manage to do it? Or how could we? "Well, one way is that performance of these standards has become part of what we understand as a decent, civilized human life" (p. 696). The mechanism then becomes shame: to not meet these expectations is not only to be abnormal but almost inhuman. One can see this at work in a heightened version of holier-than-Thou: You don't recycle (gasp)? You use plastic shopping bags (horror)? You don't drive a Prius (eek!)? "You won't wear the ribbon?!"44 This has to also be seen in light of Taylor's earlier analysis of the sociality of mutual display and the self-consciousness it generates (pp. 481-82). So what we get is justice chic. — James K.A. Smith

To expect this larger-than-life, holier-than-thou sort of existence from us is not possible. We as much want to make our own mistake as a man does. — Kangana Ranaut

Grace is loving people for who they are, where they are. It's loving people *before* they change, not just *after* they change. And that grace is the difference between holy and holier-than-thou. Holiness, in its purest form, is irresistible. That's why sinners couldn't be kept away from Jesus. Hypocrisy has the opposite effect. It's as repulsive to the irreligious as the Pharisees' religiosity was to Jesus. — Mark Batterson

There are actresses who've had expensive work done and look great, so I'm not holier-than-thou about it. But it wouldn't be for me, perhaps because I've already been in hospital and wouldn't want to volunteer myself for it again. — Celia Imrie

Any number of holier-than-thou honorable realists walk around in the belief that they have accomplished something, simply because they tell you for the hundredth time that a field is green and a red-painted house is painted red. — Edvard Munch

And in some environments, talking like an overly-educated, holier-than-thou reformer is an automatic hook. Don't get any tribal feelings about that description, either. The most sanctimonious holier-than-thou people I know are progressive social activists, not religious zealots. (Ooooh. Look at all the labeling in that sentence!) — Rory Miller

For many potential Bible readers, this expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. You're not holy enough to read the Holy Bible. It might even be sacrilege for you to try. If the Bible is God's perfect infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. That is, our sinful nature as fallen creatures is what separates us from God, and therefore from God's Word. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature. — Timothy Beal

I think those that are holier-than-thou don't make jokes. They take themselves too seriously and Peeta doesn't take himself too seriously. This is what I believe in and I'm comfortable with that and I can make a joke here and there. — Josh Hutcherson

Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-Thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books. — John Updike

We are all sinful. Trouble is that some men consider themselves less sinful than others or holier than others. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I am not holier than you, you are not holier than me. Any one who thinks he is holier than the rest deludes himself. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Greed (as Ling): You humans always get all "holier-than-thou" when it comes to this stuff ... I really don't get you.
Edward: It's called having integrity. You should try it sometime — Hiromu Arakawa

I got a imam, I got a rabbi, I got a priest, I got a reverend - I got 'em all. But I don't want to be holier-than-thou. I want to help everybody and still get some (sex). — Mike Tyson

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love ... prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude ... all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul's innate desire for malignancy. — J.R. Ward

I am not going to condemn anybody. That's where religion gets a bad name, when people get holier than thou. We are all human. If my children make a mistake, I want them to know it is all right and they should try harder next time. — Donny Osmond