Trust

Almost everybody allows himself or herself some entirely unjustifiable generalization on the subject of Woman … For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable or unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern. ~~ Bertrand Russell

Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office. ~~ David Broder

Silence is the best tactic for him who distrusts himself. ~~ Francois de la Rochefoucauld

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military. ~~ Georges Clemenceau

Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody. ~~ John Churton Collins

Quite obviously a cat trusts human beings; but she doesn't trust another cat because she knows better than we do. ~~ Karel Capek

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? ~~ George Eliot [Middlemarch]

An atmosphere of trust, love, and humor can nourish extraordinary human capacity. One key is authenticity: parents acting as people, not as roles. ~~ Marilyn Ferguson

Entrust a business to an intelligent man
Although it may not be his occupation. ~~ Sa'di

Never trust anyone under 80. ~~ Carol Brightman

Conservative people are undoubtedly right in their distrust and hatred of science, for the scientific spirit is the very spirit of innovation and adventure--the most reckless kind of adventure into the unknown. ~~ George Sarton

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance, and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. ~~ Paul Sweeney

When you have found out the prevailing passion of any man, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned. ~~ Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

Life is a gift, given in trust--like a child. ~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If you cannot trust your father and mother to love you and accept you and protect you, then you are an orphan, although your parents are upstairs asleep in their bed. ~~ Elizabeth Feuer

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's. ~~ Billy Wilder

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. ~~ Booker T. Washington

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future. ~~ Joseph Joubert

Intimacy can grow only in a place of safety. When husband and wife are afraid of hurt, rebuff, criticism, and misunderstanding, they will find it difficult to touch and share freely… If you want real intimacy in your marriage, you will have to establish trust in your relationship. ~~ Ed Wheat

Beware of covetousness, which is a malady, diseaseful, incurable. Intimacy with it is impossible, it makes the sweet friend bitter, it alienates the trusted one from his master, it makes both father and mother mad… it divorces a man's wife. ~~ Ptah-hotep

No man is fit to be trusted with power … Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ~~ C. P. Snow

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves. ~~ Rebecca West

He who has trusted where he ought not will surely mistrust where he ought not. ~~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Nothing is so capable of overturning a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to be suspected for an enemy, is often sufficient to make a person become one. ~~ Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered … deeply … finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. ~~ George Washington

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows. ~~ Susan B. Anthony

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work. ~~ Rita Mae Brown

Lately a small tabby cat has come every day and stared at me with a strange, intense look. Of course I put food out, night and morning. She is so terrified that she runs away at once when I open the door, but she comes back to eat ravenously as soon as I disappear. Yet her hunger is clearly not only for food. I long to take her in my arms and hear her purr with relief at finding shelter. Will she ever become tame enough for that, to give in to what she longs to have? It is such an intense look with which she scans my face at the door before she runs away. It is not a pleading look, simply a huge question: "Can I trust?" Our two gazes hang on its taut thread. I find it painful. ~~ May Sarton

One of the frightening things about our time is the number of people who think it is a form of intellectual audacity to be stupid. A whole generation seems to be taking on an easy distrust of thought. ~~ Renata Adler

When believers and unbelievers live in the same manner--I distrust the religion. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance. ~~ Calvin Coolidge

Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men. ~~ Samuel Johnson

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events not of words. Trust movement. ~~ Alfred Adler

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. ~~ John F. Kennedy

Trust, like the soul, never returns, once it is gone. ~~ Publilius Syrus

A fool may be known by six things: anger, without cause; speech, without profit; change, without progress; inquiry, without object; putting trust in a stranger; and mistaking foes for friends. ~~ Unattributed

One must sometimes live up to a false reputation in order to be trusted. ~~ Geoffrey Household

Trust in God and do something. ~~ Mary Lyon

With a concession of responsibility … we have entrusted our lives and futures to professionals and experts who convince us that we have too little knowledge or wit to make any decisions of importance about the management of society. ~~ Dean Koontz [Fear Nothing]

People cannot be trusted to do their jobs if they do not know how. And if they have incompetent leaders, the coefficient of the mistrust is the number of those leaders multiplied by the number of people who report to them. ~~ John O. Whitney

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood, too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper. ~~ E. M. Forster

One should never place one's trust in the future. It doesn't deserve it. ~~ Andre Chamson

The price to be paid for distrusting power is always smaller than the priced to be paid for worshipping it. ~~ Jim Hoagland

Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. ~~ Joyce Brothers

You can't trust a promise someone makes while they're drunk, in love, hungry, or running for office. ~~ Joe Moore

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. ~~ John Adams

Trust him no further than you can throw him. ~~ Thomas Fuller

God has entrusted me with myself. ~~ Epictetus

Seek simplicity and distrust it. ~~ Alfred North Whitehead

Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his superior. ~~ William Collins

Do not trust to the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged. ~~ Oliver Cromwell

To distrust is to be lonely. ~~ R. E. Phillips

From Caesar to Cromwell, and from Cromwell to Napolean … history presents the same solemn warning--beware of elevating to the highest civil trust the commander of our victorious armies. ~~ James Buchanan

Reality has changed chameleon-like before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so. ~~ Maya Angelou

As for butter versus margarine, I trust cows more than chemists. ~~ Joan Gussow

It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to tell the truth. ~~ Stanley Baldwin

Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you've become a comfortable, trusted element in another person's life. ~~ Joyce Brothers

Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things. ~~ Lawrence D. Bell

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day of the week, if there is anything to be got by it. ~~ Charles Dickens

Regard with distrust all circumstances which seem to favor our secret desires. ~~ Emile Gaboriau

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. ~~ George Macdonald

I firmly believe kids don't want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you're in big trouble. To me, they remain life's greatest mysteries. ~~ Erma Bombeck

The friend of my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. ~~ Ulysses S. Grant

Hers was one of those inconvenient natures which trust blindly or not at all: once worked on by a doubt or a suspicion, they are never able to shake themselves free of it again. ~~ Henry Handel Richardson

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our] government's statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them. ~~ US Senator William Fulbright

I have some women friends but I prefer men. Don't trust women. There is a built-in competition between women. ~~ Edna O'Brien

What children expect from grownups is not to be "understood," but only to be loved, even though this love may be expressed clumsily or in sternness. Intimacy does not exist between generations--only trust. ~~ Carl Zucker

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence. ~~ Lewis Mumford

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. ~~ Albert Schweitzer

There is a Russian saying: doveryai no proveryai, trust but verify. ~~~ Mikhail Gorbachev

Finish what you begin. Public confidence in government isn't guaranteed; it has to be earned. I know of no other way to earn the trust and cooperation of the public than first, to say what you intend to do, and the second, to do it. ~~ Neil Goldschmidt

Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others! ~~ William Hazlitt

The need to find meaning in the universe is as real as the need for trust and for love, for relations with other human beings. ~~ Margaret Mead [Twentieth Century Faith]

The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions in his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it; and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim. ~~ Thomas S. Szasz

His uncertainty forces the enthusiast to puff up his truths, of which he feels none too sure, and to win proselytes to his side in order that his followers may prove to himself the value and trustworthiness of his own convictions… Only when convincing someone else does he feel safe from gnawing doubts. ~~ Carl G. Jung

A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children. ~~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed, or mounted over the fireplace in the den. ~~ Lewis H. Lapham

The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity ~~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being the helpless prey of impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and--crowing injury--inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself. ~~ Paul Valery

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. ~~ H. L. Mencken

Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, "Trust me," they're actually being very un-American. ~~ David Duchovny

Governors must never forget that he who is unable to run his own house and family is still less competent to be entrusted with public matters. ~~ Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui

The bottom line of dependability is, can you be trusted? ~~ R. E. Phillips

You can never give complete authority and overall power to anyone until trust can be proven. ~~ Bill Cosby

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough. ~~ Dr. Frank Crane

Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything. ~~ Johann K. Lavater

We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal. ~~ Tennessee Williams

Honor begets honor; trust begets trust; faith begets faith; and hope is the mainspring of life. ~~ Henry L. Stimson

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody. ~~ Agatha Christie

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. ~~ William Inge

How desperately we wish to maintain our trust in those we love! In the face of everything, we try to find reasons to trust. Because losing faith is worse than falling out of love. ~~ Sonia Johnson

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. ~~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us… His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ("stupid things," he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid… This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency. ~~ Molly Ivins

I didn't want to work. It was as simple as that. I distrusted work, disliked it. I thought it was a very bad thing that the human race had unfortunately invented for itself. ~~ Agatha Christie

The buying of a self-help book is the most desperate of all human acts. It means you've lost your mind completely: You've entrusted your mental health to a self-aggrandizing twit with a psychology degree and a yen for a yacht. ~~ Cynthia Heimel

It's often said that the reason why we Baby Boomers became so rebellious and scornful of authority is that we were spoiled rotten and we grew up in a world where the highest authorities, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, regularly managed--with all their covert operations and their coups and their puppet governments and their spy planes and their atomic testing and their eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations--to get us into very scary situation, and then either told us nothing or lied to us. Eventually, we stopped trusting authorities. (Now, of course, we ARE the authorities, which is truly scary.) ~~ Dave Barry [Dave Barry Turns 50]

Care and consistency are point and counterpoint in the music of marriage. They are played in a delicate dust of mutual need. And we have got to be forever improvising on the score of who cares for whom and who is cared for at any given moment of need. Each of the players trusts the other to move in to take up the slack when one of them misses a beat. ~~ Lewis B. Smedes [Caring and Commitment]

We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before, and it has changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise, we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times. ~~ George Washington

I would prefer to trust a physician who has himself suffered from the malady he would treat. ~~ Montaigne

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty. ~~ Norman Douglas

Trust your gut. It doesn't know how to lie. ~~ Elvis Presley

Put your trust in God--but keep your powder dry. ~~ Oliver Cromwell

Watch a cat when it enters a room for the first time. It searches and smells about, it is not quiet for a moment, it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything. ~~ Jean Jacques Rousseau

Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion. ~~ Blythe Holbrooke

Trust everybody, but cut the cards. ~~ Finley Peter Dunne

Never trust anyone who has to change his tone to ask something of the Lord. ~~ Roberta A. Everett

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. ~~ Thomas Jefferson