Quotes About Distrust

Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer.

Even the delusionally paranoid have enemies.

People are more scared of how complicated shit actually is than they ever are about whatever's supposed to be behind the conspiracy.

How's that different from being paranoid?" "Same. Except not crazy.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

People don't help much.' He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.

I'm frightened. Of us.

You think this is a trap then? the Count asked. I always think everything is a trap until proven otherwise, the Prince answered. Which is why I'm still alive.

You don't want to be rude but you have to be careful - there are a lot of strange people out there. (Goldman attributes this quote to Cliff Robertson.)

So you think this is a trap then? the Count said. I think everything is a trap. which is why I am still alive. said the prince

If you write movies, you never know who the enemy is. Someone is going to fuck you, that's a given.

despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda.

But the Fuehrer had smelled a rat

You got to be worried when they're agreeing about anything," she said. "Prophets. That's the last bloody thing you want prophets to do.

Is it more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspiracy, or that there is not?

Promises only lead to trouble.

radio shock jocks were soon telling an audience eager to believe in their own righteousness and sound mental health that the impairment was fake.

Trust No One.

Is there any wonder why we are in such big trouble? Any question why the people don't trust their government anymore, and demand a change?

You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs

Each man had come to know the other's caricature as a lie.

Most grandiose gestures are suspect—the couple who renew their vows just before divorce or the politician who publicly swears he's clean, then enters rehab.

Treachery was axe, not a scalpel. It was Hard to make a clean cut.

He'd had a dark, angry moment when he thought they might not have fallen for the ad he'd placed in the classified section.