Quotes About Distrust

Anyway, I have long had a very definite tendency to tune out the moment I come anywhere near either a pulpit or a soapbox.

And they would not believe me precisely because they knew what I said was true.

It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)

On the contrary, we have a very deep-seated distrust of real intellectual effort (probably because we suspect that it will destroy, as I hope it does, that myth of America to which we cling so desperately).

The blacks have a song which says, 'I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.' No American film, relating to blacks, can possibly incorporate this observation.

I am too various to be trusted. If this were not so I would not be alone in this house tonight.

Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become. It is this individual uncertainty on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrum—that is, any reality—so supremely difficult.

I did not want to know what his status was with Jacques; yet the day came when it was revealed to me in Jacques' spiteful and triumphant eyes. And Giovanni, during this short encounter, in the middle of the boulevard as dusk fell, with people hurrying all about us, was really amazingly giddy and girlish, and very drunk—it was as though he were forcing me to taste the cup of his humiliation. And I hated him for this.

And the passion with which we loved the Lord was a measure of how deeply we feared and distrusted and, in the end, hated almost all strangers, always, and avoided and despised ourselves.

Because even if I should speak, no one would believe me. And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.

they ain't never met nobody they didn't lie to and steal from.

And I am not being frivolous now, either. Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become.

You are evil, you know, and sometimes when you smiled at me I hated you. I wanted to strike you. I wanted to make you bleed. You smiled at me the way you smiled at everyone, you told me what you told everyone — and you tell nothing but lies.

The blacks now suspected him of being an ally—though not a friend, never a friend!

But white people seem affronted by the black distrust of white policemen, and appear to be astonished that a black man, woman, or child can have any reason to fear a white cop.

I do not think you have ever lied to me but I know that you have never told me the truth—why?

It is very nearly impossible . . . to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind. --"They Can't Turn Back," in Mademoiselle (New York, Aug. 1960; repr. in The Price of the Ticket, 1985)     The

Horses are far worse than men for treachery...

I didn't know what was going on, didn't understand a bit of it, didn't like any of it. Maybe that's why the first thing I packed was my guns. If your brain won't work, wave a gun around. Sometimes that helps.

Though distrust of the Japanese was widespread in the Navy, Sprague was among the first to appreciate exactly what the Japanese might do. In June 1928 the Lexington participated in a mock surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

I was afraid of all girls, most boys and selected male and female adults. My fear derived from my apocalyptic fantasy apparatus. I knew that all things went chaotically bad. My empirical training in chaos was unassailably valid.

You've made a wise choice, lad...I won't insult your intelligence with the word 'trust'.

I was terrified because the good guys were really the bad guys.

Jovinderpihainu breaks it. "You are right to ask, Shari. But there is a difference between being honest and being right. Honest men lie all the time, believing that they tell the truth. Much evil is borne on the back of honesty.