“There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.”

Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize; quoted in The Independent, London (9 December 1989)
Context: There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them — isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them." by Václav Havel?
Václav Havel photo
Václav Havel 126
playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of … 1936–2011

Related quotes

Lewis Carroll photo

“But surely you trust God! Do you think He would let you come to harm? To be afraid is to distrust.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

To a girl who was frightened of traveling by train
Quoted in Beatrice Hatch, "Lewis Carroll", Strand Magazine (April 1898), p. 421

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Mateo Alemán photo

“An unsatisfactory agreement is less harmful than a successful lawsuit.”

Pt. II, Lib. II, Ch. II.
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599-1604)

Herodotus photo

“Men trust their ears less than their eyes.”

Book 1, Ch. 8.
The Histories

Henry L. Stimson photo

“The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.”

Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) United States Secretary of War

The Bomb and the Opportunity (March 1946)

Mike Krzyzewski photo
Warren Farrell photo

“The less our sons our trusted, the less women are able to really love them, and the more women feel entitled to use them as wallets.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 98.

Rupert Boneham photo
David Levithan photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“Of harmes two the lesse is for to cheese.”

Book ii, line 470
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)

Related topics