Quotes about Distrust

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

The loss of transcendence has left in its wake the flotsam of distrustful, cynical Christians, angry at a capricious God, and the jetsam of smug bibilolatrists who claim to know precisely what God is thinking and exactly what he plans to do.

The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently, to mistrust ourselves.

Both trust and gratitude require the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment, in their need to keep their claim on me, keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions.

Relate to people as a conqueror and they will hide their real nature from you. Violence is the brother and distrust the sister of this way of life.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.

The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

When you grow suspicious of a person and begin a system of espionage upon him, your punishment will be that you will find your suspicions true.

The crosses from the outside are bearable; the double-crosses inside are insoluble

The latter stage is apt to end in cynicism as we wonder what the one who praises really wants.