This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength; there is strength, and they; are the; weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength, there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers." - Christian Nestell Bovee
"When you have overcome one temptation, you must be ready to enter the lists with another. As distrust, in some sense, is the mother of safety, so security is the gate of danger. A man had need to fear this most of all, that he fears not at all." - Thomas Brooks
"Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury." - Edwin Hubbell Chapin
"What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?" - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
"The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process." - Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
"Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people... (2) those who identify themselves with people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider than as the most honest and safe." - Thomas Jefferson
"To doubt is an injury; to suspect a friend is breach of friendship; jealousy is a seed sown but in vicious minds; prone to distrust, because apt to deceive." - George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne
"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." - Madame de Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné
"We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers." - John Christian Bovee
"When a man thinks he is reading the character of another, he is often unconsciously betraying his own; and this is especially the case with those persons whose knowledge of the world is of such sort that it results in extreme distrust of men." - Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell
"The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, hear much, always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends; never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as we possibly can; to hearken to what is said, and to answer to the purpose." - Benjamin Franklin
"Gentlemen, let us distrust our first reactions; they are invariably much too favorable." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Joyous distrust is as sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority." - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"The feeling of distrust is always the last which a great mind acquires." - Jean Racine, baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine
"The enemy is brownness and whiteness, maleness and femaleness. The enemy is our urgent need to stereotype and close off people, places, and events into isolated categories. Hatred, distrust, irresponsibility, unloving, classism, sexism, and racism, in their myriad forms, cloud our vision and isolate us… We close off avenues of communication and vision so that individual and communal trust, responsibility, loving, and knowing are impossible." -
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the pubic interests… Call them… Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object." - Thomas Jefferson
"A love that has no silence has no depth. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” There are people whose love we instinctively distrust because they are always telling us about it. And perhaps it is simply because God is love, in all the glorious fullness of that word, that we have to be still if we would know him." - George Herbert Morrison
"When we distrust passion because it is too subjective, or reject authority because it has no input of our own, we flee to reason." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto
"What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations." - Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
"Distrust interested advice." - Aesop NULL
"Seek simplicity and distrust it." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible." - Arthur Gordon
"The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity." - Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
"The rule of life is to be found within yourself. Ask yourself constantly, "What is the right thing to do?" Beware of ever doing that which you are likely, sooner or later, to repent of having done. It is better to live in peace than in bitterness and strife. It is better to believe in your neighbors than to fear and distrust them. The superior man does not wrangle. He is firm but not quarrelsome. He is sociable but not clannish. The superior man sets a good example to his neighbors. He is considerate of their feelings and property. Consideration for others is the basis of a good life, and a good society. Feel kindly toward everyone. Be friendly and pleasant among yourselves. Be generous and fair." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Our distrust justifies deceit in another." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"Logic and cold reason are poor weapons to fight fear and distrust. Only faith and generosity can overcome them." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"I distrust the incommunicable: it is the source of all violence." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"He who exhibits no faults is a fool or a hypocrite whom we should distrust." - Joseph Joubert
"We distrust our heart too much, and our head not enough." - Joseph Roux
"Our distrust is very expensive." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness off the deep springs of life. Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living." - Samuel Ullman
"The best rules to form a young man, are; to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"The best rules to form a young man are to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one’s own opinions, and value others that deserve it." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"Some authors today argue that romantic love is such an illusion that we need to distrust it and keep our wits about us so that we are not led astray. But warnings like this betray a distrust of the soul. We may need to be cured by love of our attachment to life without fantasy. Maybe one function of love is to cure us of an anemic imagination, a life emptied of romantic attachment and abandoned to reason. Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws - "Love is blind." But it may be the other way around. Love allows a person to see the true angelic nature of another person, the halo, the aureole of divinity." - Thomas Moore
"We live in a world that trusts logic, and from that commitment we distrust desire; but if we lived in a world that validated desire, we would know how to trust it." - Thomas Moore
"When prayer removes distrust and doubt and enters the field of mental certainty, it becomes faith; and the universe is built on faith." - Ernest Shurtleff Holmes
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action. " - Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
"Nobody who is afraid of laughing, and heartily too at his friend, can be said to have a true and thorough love for him; and, on the other hand, it would portray a sorry want of faith to distrust a friend because he laughs at you. Few men, I believe, are much worth loving in whom there is not something well worth laughing at." - J. C. Hare (1795-1855) and A. W. Hare