"Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is"
About this Quote
Rebecca West is needling one of our favorite moral shortcuts: treating disgust as a measuring tool. “Hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils” is deliberately bodily language, a reminder that our reaction to double standards is visceral before it’s rational. The line’s sly pivot comes after the comma: that very revulsion makes us “likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.” West isn’t excusing hypocrisy; she’s diagnosing how outrage inflates it into an all-purpose explanation for social collapse.
The intent is corrective, almost tactical. Hypocrisy is real damage, but it’s also an easy target: clear, legible, narratively satisfying. It lets us believe that if we just unmask the frauds, the rot is gone. West’s subtext is that hypocrisy often rides atop deeper engines - greed, fear, cruelty, inertia - that don’t smell as theatrically bad and therefore evade scrutiny. We mistake the odor for the toxin.
Context matters: West wrote across wars, ideological crusades, and the rise of mass persuasion. In those conditions, “hypocrisy” becomes a rhetorical weapon, a way to delegitimize opponents without grappling with the harder question of what actually drives events. The sentence works because it’s both sensory and skeptical: it validates the gut punch, then refuses to let the gut write the diagnosis. In an attention economy that rewards call-outs, West’s warning feels uncomfortably current.
The intent is corrective, almost tactical. Hypocrisy is real damage, but it’s also an easy target: clear, legible, narratively satisfying. It lets us believe that if we just unmask the frauds, the rot is gone. West’s subtext is that hypocrisy often rides atop deeper engines - greed, fear, cruelty, inertia - that don’t smell as theatrically bad and therefore evade scrutiny. We mistake the odor for the toxin.
Context matters: West wrote across wars, ideological crusades, and the rise of mass persuasion. In those conditions, “hypocrisy” becomes a rhetorical weapon, a way to delegitimize opponents without grappling with the harder question of what actually drives events. The sentence works because it’s both sensory and skeptical: it validates the gut punch, then refuses to let the gut write the diagnosis. In an attention economy that rewards call-outs, West’s warning feels uncomfortably current.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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