30 Eye-Opening Quotes About Trust That Prove Its Importance

Without an understanding of how trust works, it’s impossible to form and sustain meaningful relationships. But trust is complicated, which is what makes skepticism healthy to a certain extent.

Trust is when you firmly believe in the reliability, ability, and truths of someone or something. Having people you trust can help you achieve the confidence to pursue your goals with honesty and integrity. Here are 30 incredible quotes about trust that testify to its importance.

Most Famous Quotes About Trust

Here are some of the most famous adages about trust that have struck a reflective chord with people everywhere.

#1. “We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.” — Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

#2. “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.

#3. “To the trustworthy man belongs a divine voice. The barge on the river and the chariot on the road come to him.” ― Sumerian Proverb, Urim

#4. “Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported.” ― Frederick Douglas, Our Composite Nationality

#5. “Men trust their ears less than their eyes.” ― Herodotus, The Histories

Eye-opening Quotes About Trust

Here are some of the things you perhaps didn’t know about trust or simply never thought about.

#6. “Top 15 Things Money Can’t Buy: Time. Happiness. Inner Peace. Integrity. Love. Character. Manners. Health. Respect. Morals. Trust. Patience. Class. Common sense. Dignity.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

#7. “Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.” ― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

#8. “Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!” ― Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale

#9. “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” ― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World

#10. “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.” ― Henry L. Stimson, The Bomb and the Opportunity

Trust Quotes For Relationships

Communication is a key part of achieving trust in your relationships. Here are some quotes about the way trust works in relationships.

#11. “The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” ― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

#12. “Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts.”

“But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.” ― Christopher Pike, Remember Me

#13. “We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

#14. “After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can’t trust a person.” ― Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

#15. “When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.” ― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Broken Trust Quotes

It’s not easy when your trust is broken. And while you should always try to avoid the trap of cynicism, there are some important lessons broken trust teaches you.

#16. “For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” ― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

#17. “It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” ― Confucius, Source: Unknown

#18. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” — Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives by Gerald James Holton, Yehuda Elkana

#19. “Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter.” ― Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

#20. “As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” ― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

Quotes About Trusting Yourself

Having self-confidence or self-belief is the only way you’ll ever achieve your goals. Where else are you going to find the motivation to get on that daily grind?

#21. “I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me ‘I love you.’ No. If they don’t love themselves, not, uh-uh. There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” — Maya Angelou, The Distinguished Annie Clark Tanner Lecture, 16th-annual Families Alive Conference, Weber State University, (1997)

#22. “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.” ― Alan Wilson Watts, The Essence of Alan Watts

#23. “You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (First series, 1841)

#24. “No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him. To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,” striking himself upon the breast, “has been heaved up ever since.” ― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

#25. “Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” ― Rita Mae Brown, Starting From Scratch

Friendship Trust Quotes

In order to make trustworthy friends, you must also be able to inspire trust in yourself. Here are some important quotes about trust when it comes to friendship.

#26. “Friendship — my definition — is built on two things. Respect and trust. Both elements have to be there. And it has to be mutual. You can have respect for someone, but if you don’t have trust, the friendship will crumble.” ― Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

#27. “‘You think I’m a fool?’ demanded Harry. ‘No, I think you’re like James,’ said Lupin, ‘who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends.’” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

#28. “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.”

“I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson , Essays: First Series

#29. “‘But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,’ said Frodo. Sam looked at him unhappily. ‘It all depends on what you want,’ put in Merry. ‘You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin — to the bitter end.”

“And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours — closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.’” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

#30. “Friendship is constant in all other things save in office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.” ― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing