Distrust Quotes - Page 9

• German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

  Paul Celan

  Beauty, Truth, Poetry

  Paul Celan, Rosemarie Waldrop (2003). “Collected Prose”, p.15, Psychology Press

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• The person who can laugh with life has developed deep roots with confidence and faith-faith in oneself, in people and in the world, as contrasted to negative ideas with distrust and discouragement.

  Democritus

  Laughter, Ideas, Roots

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• For if I should not believe all that is written by Historians, of the glorious acts of Alexander, or Caesar; I do not think the Ghost of Alexander, or Caesar, had any just cause to be offended; or any body else, but the Historian. If Livy say the Gods made once a Cow speak, and we believe it not; we distrust not God therein, but Livy. So that it is evident, that whatsoever we believe, upon no other reason, then what is drawn from authority of men only, and their writings; whether they be sent from God or not, is Faith in men only.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Faith, Believe, Writing

  Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (1996). “Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition”, p.49, Cambridge University Press

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• An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Guilt, Too Much

  Herman Melville (2015). “Israel Potter: Works of Melville”, p.39, 谷月社

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• We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Men, Rushing, Weakness

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• Zoroaster said, when in doubt abstain; but this does not always apply. At cards, when in doubt take the trick.

  Josh Billings

  Doubt, Doe, Cards

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• Nowadays there is no conversation at all. Teachers distrust talk as much as business men.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Teacher, Men, Conversation

  Marshall McLuhan, Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, William Toye (1987). “Letters of Marshall McLuhan”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Besides the progress of industry and technique, we see a growing discontent among the masses; we see, besides the expansion ("expansion,", Fr.) of instruction, distrust and hatred expanding among nations ("s'étendre la méfiance et la haine entre," Fr.), that vie with one another ("qui rivalisent à l'envi," Fr.), by the increase of their armies and the improvement of their engines of murder ("engins meurtriers", Fr).

  African Spir

  Army, Hatred, Progress

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 37), 1937.

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• Nothing is more certain of destroying any good feeling that may be cherished towards us than to show distrust. To be suspected as an enemy is often enough to make a man become so; the whole matter is over, there is no farther use of guarding against it. On the contrary, confidence leads us naturally to act kindly, we are affected by the good opinion which others entertain of us, and we are not easily induced to lose it.

  Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne

  Men, Feelings, Enemy

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• Choosing a director is like choosing a therapist - you want somebody who is going to be a step or two ahead of you, who can interpret and articulate your intentions better than you can, with the benefit of objectivity. I look for a collaborator who is going to help bring to life, on stage, in three dimensions, what is on the page. I wouldn't want a director who imposes conceits or distrusts the text or who has prejudged the characters.

  Donald Margulies

  Character, Objectivity, Two

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• The ambiguous, gray areas of authority and responsibility between parents and teachers exacerbate the distrust between them. The distrust is further complicated by the fact that it is rarely articulated, but usually remains smoldering and silent.

  Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

  Teacher, Responsibility, Parent

  Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (1978). “Worlds apart: relationships between families and schools”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Shadow, Judgment, Moments

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1994). “Aphorisms”, Ariadne Press (CA)

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• I think revolution happens when you distrust anything in its current state, including yourself.

  Wang Jianwei

  Thinking, Revolution

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• I think my deepest criticism of the educational system . . . is that it's all based upon a distrust of the student. Don't trust him to follow his own leads; guide him; tell him what to do; tell him what he should think; tell him what he should learn. Consequently at the very age when he should be developing adult characteristics of choice and decision making, when he should be trusted on some of those things, trusted to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, he is, instead, regimented and shoved into a curriculum, whether it fits him or not.

  Carl Rogers

  Mistake, Educational, Thinking

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• Surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of prayer.

  John Ruskin

  Prayer, Mind, Atheism

  John Ruskin (1879). “Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church”, p.29, Library of Alexandria

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• 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. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?).

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.4894, Delphi Classics

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• Many men provoke others to overreach them by excessive suspicion; their extraordinary distrust in some sort justifies the deceit.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Deceit, Suspicion

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• The distrust and suspicion which men everywhere evidence toward their adversaries, at all states of historical development, may be regarded as the immediate precursor to the notion of ideology.

  Karl Mannheim

  Men, Historical, Atheism

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• It appears it would be quite un-American not to be suspicious of the government or to distrust it. History has taught them a little too much about the tragic frailties of human governments, but it has also driven home to them that they must control firmly political and economic power, which, handed over to any government in their land, could be easily used to oppress them.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Home, Government

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• Distrust that man who tells you to distrust. He takes the measure of his own small soul, and thinks the world no larger.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Thinking, Men, Soul

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.577, Delphi Classics

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• Avant-garde theatre, with its distrust of the individual (that bourgeois invention), tends to go beyond [character] and the psychological approach in search of a syntax of types and characters which are "deconstructed and post-individual.

  Patrice Pavis

  Character, Theatre, Avant Garde

  Patrice Pavis, Christine Shantz (1998). “Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis”, p.43, University of Toronto Press

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• I can look back . . . at two distinct periods of opinion whose foundations I have successively come to distrust - a period before 1919 or so, when the weight of classic authority unduly influenced me, and another period from 1919 to about 1925, when I placed too high a value on the elements of revolt, florid colour, and emotional extravagance or intensity.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Emotional, Two, Foundation

  Letter to August Derleth (1929), in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, (p. 307), 1996.

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• It is amazing how many of the horrors of the 20th century were a result of charismatic quacks misleading millions of people to their own doom. What is even more amazing is that, after a century that saw the likes of Hitler, Lenin and Mao, we still see no need to distrust charisma as a basis for choosing leaders, either in politics or in numerous organizations and movements.

  Thomas Sowell

  Organization, People, Leader

  Thomas Sowell (2002). “Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which, we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect, the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.

  William Hazlitt

  Confidence, Yield, Spirit

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• Distrust that man who tells you to distrust.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Men

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.577, Delphi Classics

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