Hypocrisy is preferable to decadence

Saying this kind of thing makes some people shake with anger. You look at their lives and you see why.

The failure of human beings to meet their own ideals does not disprove or discredit those ideals. The fact that some are cowards does not make courage a myth. The fact that some are faithless does not make fidelity a joke. All moral standards create the possibility of hypocrisy. But I would rather live among those who recognize standards and fail to meet them than among those who mock all standards as lies. In the end, hypocrisy is preferable to decadence.

-- Michael Gerson in "Sex and Grace"