Quotes about trust
page 21

Albert Einstein photo

“In matters concerning truth and justice there can be no distinction between big problems and small; for the general principles which determine the conduct of men are indivisible. Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1955) as quoted in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (1997) ed. Gerald Holton, Yehuda Elkana, p. 388, from The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem (1979
1950s

James Madison photo
Epictetus photo

“For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Book II, ch. 1.
Discourses
Variant: ...Only the educated are free.

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Caroline Lucas photo

“We would be kidding ourselves if we put our trust in Brazil’s right-wing, pro-business president Jair Bolsonaro to protect it.”

Caroline Lucas (1960) British politician, MP of the Green Party for Brighton Pavilion and former MEP for South-East England

Caroline Lucas MP: The Amazon rainforest must not be sacrificed on the altar of free trade with Europe https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/environment/global-warming/opinion/house-commons/106068/caroline-lucas-mp-amazon-rainforest (23 August 2019)
2019

RuPaul photo
Bhagwan Das photo
Michael Moorcock photo

“Men may trust men, Prince Elric, but perhaps we’ll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3, Chapter 7 “The Irony of It” (p. 413)
The Elric Cycle, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976)

Charles Darwin photo

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibilites.”

On the Origin of Species (1859)

Lala Lajpat Rai photo

“There is one point more which has been troubling me very much of late and one which I want you to think carefully and that is the question of Hindu-Mohamedan unity. I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think, it is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming and admitting the sincerity of the Mohamedan leaders in the Non-cooperation movement, I think their religion provides an effective bar to anything of the kind. You remember the conversation, I reported to you in Calcutta, which I had with Hakim Ajmalkhan and Dr. Kitchlew. There is no finer Mohamedan in Hindustan than Hakimsaheb but can any other Muslim leader override the Quran? I can only hope that my reading of Islamic Law is incorrect, and nothing would relieve me more than to be convinced that it is so. But if it is right then it comes to this that although we can unite against the British we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on British lines, we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on democratic lines. What is then the remedy? I am not afraid of seven crores in Hindustan but I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity or desirability of Hindu-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Quran and Hadis? The leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed? I hope not. I hope learned mind and wise head will find some way out of this difficulty.”

Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) Indian author and politician

in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)

Seneca the Younger photo
Hendrik Verwoerd photo
Leanne Wood photo
Frank W. Abagnale photo

“He understood whatever those hidden mechanisms are that convince people to trust you. I kind of watched him and absorbed what I could from him.”

Frank W. Abagnale (1948) American security consultant, former confidence trickster, check forger, impostor, and escape artist

Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of Catch Me if You Can
Leonardo DiCaprio Catch Me if You Can Interview, 2008-10-12, Alec Cawthorne, 2003-01-16, BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2003/01/16/leonardo_dicaprio_catch_me_if_you_can_interview.shtml,

Stanley Baldwin photo

“We desire to go on working to maintain world peace, and to strengthen the League of Nations, and I give you my word – and I think you can trust me by now – our defence programme will be no more than is sufficient to make our country safe and enable us to fulfil our obligations. That much we must have.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Film broadcast (31 October 1935), quoted in John Ramsden, A History of the Conservative Party: The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (1978), p. 345
1935

Stanley Baldwin photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
V. P. Singh photo

“He was a lonely man in politics. He was neither liked nor trusted by his colleagues because he went against the grain.”

V. P. Singh (1931–2008) Indian politician

VP Singh: Former prime minister of India who tried to improve the lot of his country's lower castes

Howard S. Becker photo

“When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as a special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rules agreed upon by the group. He is regarded as an outsider.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

But the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may not regard those who judge him as either competent or legitimately entitled to do so. Hence, a second meaning of the term emerges: the rule-breaker may feel his judges are outsiders.
Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), pp. 1-2.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury photo
William the Silent photo

“You are staking your own head by trusting the King. Never will I so stake mine, for he has deceived me too often. His favourite maxim is, haereticis non est servanda fides.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

I am now bald and Calvinist and in that faith will I die.
William to a supporter of the King, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 92

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo
Rudolf Hess photo

“I was the only man he trusted.”

Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) German Nazi leader

Lt. Col. Eugene K. Bird

Julian of Norwich photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Truman Capote photo

“Never trust a nigger: their minds and hair are full of kinks in equal measure.”

Miss Amy
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Jon Postel photo
Walt Whitman photo
Douglas MacArthur photo

“The soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. When he violates this sacred trust, he not only profanes his entire cult but threatens the very fabric of international society. The traditions of fighting men are long and honorable. They are based upon the noblest of human traits—sacrifice.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

From a 1946 statement by MacArthur confirming the death sentence imposed by a U. S. military commission on Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita, as quoted in MacArthur's Reminscences (McGraw-Hill, 1964) p. 295. Also used as the epigraph to Telford Taylor's Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (New York: Bantam, 1970).
1940s

Joyce Brothers photo

“Trust your hunches... Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. Warning! Do not confuse your hunches with wishful thinking. This is the road to disaster.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Words of Wisdom : More Good Advice (1990) edited by William Safire and Leonard Safir, p. 199
Variant: Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
Trust your hunches. Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. But be warned, don't confuse hunches with wishful thinking.

David Frawley photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Teal Swan photo
Teal Swan photo
Teal Swan photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Civil Courage, p. 5

Daniel Abraham photo

“Secrecy is the potting soil in which all this conspiracy shit grows. Trust me. The roaches don’t like it when you start shining a light on them.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 13 (p. 140)

Steven Crowder photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“Production that is essentially completed, which no longer requires strength, ability, inventiveness, entrepreneurship and brilliance (e.g., the transportation system, trusts, conglomerates) will be brought back to state ownership.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Der Nazi-Sozi https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/nazi-sozi.htm, Elberfeld: Verlag der Nationalsozialistischen Briefe (1927)
1920s

Kim Il-sung photo

“Thanks to our trust in people, we won everything.”

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

With the century, vol. 4

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge photo

“Of course, Harry and I are both quite upset about it - that our mother's trust has been betrayed and even now she is still being exploited.”

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (1982) a member of the British royal family

(Reaction to a book published about his mother from her private secretary) AP via BBC News http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EQW97-KJVhEJ:news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/948542.stm+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
Associated Press interview during his gap year (29 September 2000)

Mitt Romney photo
William Quan Judge photo

“Place your only faith, reliance, and trust on Karma”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

Vol. I, Letter 1
Letters That Have Helped Me (1891)

Benjamin Creme photo
Ralph Nader photo
Uthman photo
William Wordsworth photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen photo
Igor Matovič photo

“We are taking responsibility for Slovakia at a time when confidence in police and courts is minimal, when Slovakia tops corruption rankings.. We'll do anything to ensure that citizens will trust their state again.”

Igor Matovič (1973) Slovak politician

Igor Matovic sworn in as Slovakia's prime minister, By Sommer Brokaw, UPI https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/03/21/Igor-Matovic-sworn-in-as-Slovakias-prime-minister/4591584810212/, 21 March 2020

Alastair Reynolds photo

“Some promises are best broken. Trust me on this: I’m a politician.”

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 34 (p. 475)

William Cobbett photo

“A man of all countries is a man of no country: and let all those citizens of the world remember, that he who has been a bad subject in his own country...will never be either trusted or respected.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

‘Observations on Priestley's Emigration’ (August 1794), Porcupine's Works; containing various writings and selections, exhibiting a faithful picture of the United States of America, Volume I (1801), p. 169
1790s

William Cobbett photo
Alastair Reynolds photo

“The question is: do you trust me? Sometimes.”

Bella smiled. “That’s exactly the right attitude: trust your leaders, but be careful not to trust them too much.”
Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 27 (p. 397)

Szeto Wah photo

“My trust towards China was both built up and broken down by Deng Xiaoping. There was hope due to his economic reforms, but the 4 June massacre killed all that.”

Szeto Wah (1931–2011) Hong Kong politician and teacher

Szeto Wah obituary https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/10/szeto-wah-obituary

Benjamin Creme photo
Wendell Berry photo
Ken Thompson photo

“You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.) No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code.”

Ken Thompson (1943) American computer scientist, creator of the Unix operating system

"Reflections on Trusting Trust" http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/360000/358210/reflections.pdf, 1983 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 27 (8), August 1984, pp. 761-763.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Edward Carson, Baron Carson photo
Joseph Addison photo
Ram Dass photo

“I thought at that moment, Wow, I've got it made. I'm just a new beautiful being — I'm just an inner self — all I'll ever need to do is look inside and I'll know what to do and I can always trust it, and here I'll be forever.”

But two or three days later I was talking about the whole thing in the past tense. I was talking about how I "experienced" this thing, because I was back being that anxiety-neurotic, in a slightly milder form, but still, my old personality was sneaking back up on me.
Be Here Now (1971)

Edith Windsor photo

“I really believe in the supreme court. First of all, I'm the youngest in my family and justice matters a lot – the littlest one gets pushed around a lot. And I trust the supreme court, I trust the constitution – so I feel a certain confidence that we'll win.”

Edith Windsor (1929–2017) American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM

On her confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court in “Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer: 'A love affair that just kept on and on and on'” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/26/edith-windsor-thea-spyer-doma) (The Guardian; 2013 Jun 26)

Bhanu Choudhrie photo

“Always look at the long-term opportunity. Take a business where you can see the long-term potential, then put in a management team you can trust to execute your strategy.”

"Bhanu Choudhrie – C & C Alpha Group" https://www.thewealthscene.com/business-leaders-entrepreneurs/bhanu-choudhrie-c-c-alpha-group/, The Wealth Scene (2018)

William Faulkner photo
Carmen Lomas Garza photo

“My parents did not trust…There was a lot of mistrust…There was this skepticism about white people because of what they had gone through. And I didn't associate with any white people except when I got to junior high.”

Carmen Lomas Garza (1948) Mexican-American artist and illustrator

On the racial divides in her household and community in “Oral history interview with Carmen Lomas Garza, 1997 Apr. 10-May 27” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-carmen-lomas-garza-13540#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Simon Sinek photo

“And that’s what trust is. We don’t just trust people to obey the rules, we also trust that they know when to break them.”

Simon Sinek (1973) British/American author and motivational speaker

Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Harry Gordon Selfridge photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Among guys, if you can’t tease ’em, you can’t trust ’em.”

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

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 152

Milton Friedman photo

“Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is 'volunteer,' your army is 'professional,' and the enemy's army is 'mercenary.' All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It's always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term 'mercenary' somehow has a negative connotation.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

And this is much more broadly based. In fact, I think mercenary motives are among the least unattractive that we have.
The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives, Sol Tax, edit., chapter: “Why Not a Voluntary Army?” University of Chicago Press (1967) p. 366, based on the Conference Held at the University of Chicago, December 4-7, 1966

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“The Government of India is the most arduous and perhaps the noblest trust ever undertaken by a nation.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Glasgow (5 December 1879), quoted in Michael Balfour, Britain and Joseph Chamberlain (1985), p. 212
1870s

Milton Friedman photo

“Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is 'volunteer,' your army is 'professional,' and the enemy's army is 'mercenary.' All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It's always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term 'mercenary' somehow has a negative connotation. I remind you of that wonderful quotation of Adam Smith when he said, 'You do not owe your daily bread to the benevolence of the baker, but to his proper regard for his own interest.'”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

And this is much more broadly based. In fact, I think mercenary motives are among the least unattractive that we have.
Source: The Draft: A Handbook of Facts and Alternatives, Sol Tax, edit., chapter: “Recruitment of Military Manpower Solely by Voluntary Means,” chairman: Aristide Zolberg, University of Chicago Press (1967) p. 366, based on the Conference Held at the University of Chicago, December 4-7, 1966, also in Two Lucky People, Milton and Rose Friedman, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.

John F. Kennedy photo

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Confucius photo

“Honesty and trust are promoted, and good neighborliness cultivated.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

The Analects, A Great Utopia (The World of Da-Tong)

Amanda Gorman photo
Théodore Guérin photo
Phil Spector photo
Dorothy Thompson photo
John Cooper Clarke photo

“You know, like they say: never trust a thin chef, or a doctor with leprosy.”

John Cooper Clarke (1951) English performance poet

Source: I Wanna Be Yours (2020), p. 99.

Jon Ossoff photo

“Work but use your head as well as your hands, trust in God and He will never let you down.”

Timothy Quill (1901–1960) Early Dáil member, cooperative organiser, agriculturalist

The Cork Examiner (1955)

Boris Yeltsin photo
Justin Barrett photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“The limits of trust depend much on whether you mean to do business more than once.”

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012), Chapter 20 (p. 442)

James Clear photo
Julian of Norwich photo

“Thus we stand in this medley all the days of our life. But He willeth that we trust that He is lastingly with us. And that in three manner.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

He is with us in Heaven, very Man, in His own Person, us updrawing; and that was shewed in the Spiritual Thirst. And He is with us in earth, us leading; and that was shewed in the Third, where I saw God in a Point. And He is with us in our soul, endlessly dwelling, us ruling and keeping; and that was shewed in the Sixteenth, as I shall tell.
Summations, Chapter 52

Julian of Norwich photo
Garth Nix photo

“Who can I trust?”

Arthur blurted out.
"Those who wish you well," said the Old One. "Not those who wish to use you well. Be a player, not a pawn. And that is three questions and all your time."
Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Mister Monday (2003), p. 247.

David Gerrold photo

“The way I heard it, a contract is a list of all the ways two people don’t trust each other.”

David Gerrold (1944) American screenwriter and novelist

Source: Short fiction, The Further Adventures of Mr. Costello, p. 228

Felix Adler photo
Felix Adler photo

“There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, " though the heavens should fall."”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Attila photo

“If you want your enemy to trust you in the future, keep the promises you made during bargaining.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

Jason Tanamor photo
Benjamin Spock photo

“Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care