This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The worst of poisons: to mistrust (despair) one's power." - Heinrich Heine
"Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend." - Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
"One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they; then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much; more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them." - Frederika Bremer
"Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!" - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate." - Albert Schweitzer
"I am firmly convinced that the passionate will for justice and truth has done more to improve [the human condition] than calculating political shrewdness which in the long run only breeds general mistrust." - Albert Einstein
"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate." - Albert Schweitzer
"Mistrust your zeal for doing good to others." - Abbe Henri Huvelin, curé de Saint Augustin
"It is more shameful to mistrust one's friends than to be deceived by them." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard." - Eric Hoffer
"Always mistrust a subordinate who never finds fault with his superior." - John Churton Collins
"Mistrust no man without cause, neither be ye credulous without proofe." - John Lyly or Lilly or Lylie
"Hope and fear bring trust and mistrust by turns." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"When one professes [courage] too openly, by words or beating, there is a reason to mistrust it." - William Tecumseh Sherman
"We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future." - Joseph Joubert
"There is a good deal to be said for frivolity. Frivolous people, when all is said and done, do less harm in the world than some of our philanthropisers and reformers. Mistrust a man who never has an occasional flash of silliness." - Lord Berners, fully Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners, aka Gerald Tyrwhitt
"One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
"Have we not been able to cross the threshold of mistrust, though mistrust has not completely disappeared? Has not the political thinking in the world changed substantially? Does not most of the world community already regard weapons of mass destruction as unacceptable for achieving political objectives?" - Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
"The truth is like a piano: the notes may be high or low, one may strike a Cor an E, but they are all notes. So the difference between ideas is like thatbetween notes, and it is the same in daily life with the right and the wrong attitude. If we have the wrong attitude all things are right. The man whomistrusts himself will mistrust his best friend; the man who trusts himself will trust everyone." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
"We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them" - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"The U.S., for historical reasons, mistrusts the concept of a welfare state, and this mistrust shows itself nakedly under present US government, which commits uncounted billions of the national wealth to what it calls defense, and is close-fisted in giving money to plans which would ameliorate the grinding poverty of a great part of its people. Quite simply, in Canada you could not get away with that." - Robertson Davies
"We mistrust anything that too strongly challenges our ideal of mediocrity." - Robertson Davies
"I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts." - Thomas Merton
"And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair." - William Collins
"A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy." - Wendell Berry
"If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared." - Wendell Berry
"It is not sufficient that a few in society penetrate to the depths of living and offer fascinating accounts about the oneness of all beings. What is necessary in these critical times is that all sensitive and caring people make a personal discovery of the fact of oneness and allow compassion to flow in their lives. When compassion and realization of oneness becomes the dynamic of human relationship, then humankind will evolve." - Vimala Thakar
"By Thy perfect Intelligence, O Mazda Thou didst first create us having bodies and spiritual consciences, and by Thy Thought gave ourselves the power of thought, word, and deed. Thus leaving us free to choose our faith at our own will." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
"Exhaustion of strength does not exhaust the will. Faith is only a secondary power, to will is the first. The proverbial mountains which faith moves are nothing beside that which the will accomplishes." - Victor Hugo
"Because it is a customary cross, as die to love as thoughts, and dreams, and sighs, wishes, and tears, poor fancy's followers." - William Shakespeare
"Government today is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer any citizens in the world there are only subjects. They work day in and day out for their masters they are bound to die for their masters at call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"When I paint, I paint under the dictate of feeling or sensing, and the outcome all the time is supposed to say something." - Hans Hoffman