Quotations

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Quotations about trust.

The main goal of this page is have a handy list of quotations so that can be used in papers.

Contents

[edit] Sorted

[edit] Internet

The reason cryptography is not in constant use in representing trust on the Web is that there is not, yet, a weblike, decentralized infrastructure.

-- Tim Berners-Lee in "Weaving the Web"

[edit] Politicians

Doveryay, no proveryay... (Trust, but verify.)

-- Ronald Reagan, quoting Gorbachev quoting Lenin, on signing the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty (it is a Russian proverb in fact)

The problem is not trust... the problem is how he will implement what has been agreed upon.

-- Yasir Arafat on Benjamin Netanyahu's trustworthiness, Newsweek, page 6, June 19, 1997

I trust no one. Not even myself.

-- Josef Stalin


The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

--Winston Churchill

[edit] Proverbs

"Hold a true friend with both your hands."

--Nigerian Proverb

"One falsehood spoils a thousand truths."

--Ashanti Proverb

"He that is wise can make a friend of a foe."

--Scottish Proverb

[edit] Religion

In ordinary life, if mindfulness, or attention, is directed to any object, it is rarely sustained long enough for the purpose of careful and factual observation. Generally it is followed immediately by emotional reaction, discriminative thought, reflection, or purposeful action. In a life and thought governed by the Buddha's teaching too, mindfulness (sati) is mostly linked with clear comprehension (sampajañña) of the right purpose or suitability of an action, and other considerations. Thus again it is not viewed in itself. But to tap the actual and potential power of mindfulness it is necessary to understand and deliberately cultivate it in its basic, unalloyed form, which we shall call bare attention.

-- Buddha

The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

-- Mother Teresa of Kolkata

[edit] Writers

You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

-- Anton Chekhov

What we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

-- Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently's Hoistic Detective Agency

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

-- Oscar Wilde

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

-- George Orwell

"In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency“”.

-- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972

[edit] Artists

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

--Pablo Picasso


[edit] To sort

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree

-- James Madison

covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all

-- Hobbes

Most take things upon trust.

--Locke.

He that trusts every one without reserve will at last be deceived.

--Johnson.

Artoo Deetoo, you know better than to trust a strange computer!

-- See-Threepio, The Empire Strikes Back


The moral is obvious. You cannot trust code that you did not totally create yourself.

-- Ken Thompson, Turing Award Lecture [Thompson, 1984]


Trust is the result of a risk successfully survived.

-- Andy Gibb

What we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

-- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I don't trust him. We're friends.

-- Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956)

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

-- Publilius Syrus

In God we trust, all others pay cash

-- Jean Shepherd

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

-- Mark Twain

"Honesty is the best policy."

-- Miguel do Cervantes

"It takes two to speak the truth-one to speak and another to hear."

--Henry David Thoreau

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold."

--Anonymous

"A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth."

--Aesop


"Most people are honest. And they mean well. Some people go out of their way to make things right. I've heard great stories about the honesty of people here. But some people are dishonest. Or deceptive. This is true here, in the newsgroups, in the classifieds, and right next door. It's a fact of life. But here, those people can't hide. We'll drive them away. Protect others from them. This grand hope depends on your active participation."

-- eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar in a message posted to the eBay Community, February 26, 1996*

The truster sees in his own vulnerability the instrument whereby a trust relationship may be created :-- Luhmann

Trust does not reside in integrated circuits or fiber optic cables. Although it involves an exchange of information, trust is not reducible to information. A “virtual” firm can have abundant information coming through network wires about its suppliers and contractors. But if they are all crooks or frauds, dealing with them will remain a costly process involving complex contracts and time-consuming enforcement.

--Fukuyama (1995: 25)

"A theory, ultimately, must be judged for its accord with reality."

--S. Leshniewski, (1886 - 1939)

"In Information Theory, information has nothing to do with knowledge or meaning. In the context of Information Theory, information is simply that which is transferred from a source to a destination, using a communication channel. If, before transmission, the information is available at the destination then the transfer is zero. Information received by a party is that what the party does not expect -- as measured by the uncertainty of the party as to what the message will be."

--Shannon

"To make progress in understanding all this, we probably need to begin with simplified (oversimplified?) models and ignore the critics' tirade that the real world is more complex. The real world is always more complex, which has the advantage that we shan't run out of work."

--[Ball84].

In theory there is no difference between practice and theory but in practice there is.

When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.

-- pericles

Life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty.

---pericles

For we purchase our friends not by receiving but by bestowing benefits. And he that bestoweth a good turn is ever the most constant friend because he will not lose the thanks due unto him from him whom he bestowed it on. Whereas the friendship of him that oweth a benefit is dull and flat, as knowing his benefit not to be taken for a favour but for a debt. So that we only do good to others not upon computation of profit but freeness of trust.

---perciles

No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

---pericles

Testimonial is a specific type of transfer device in which admired individuals give their endorsement to an idea, product, or cause. Cereal companies put the pictures of famous athletes on their cereal boxes, politicians seek out the support of popular actors, and activist groups invite celebrities to speak at their rallies. Sometimes testimonials are transparently obvious. Whenever they are used, however, the IPA recommends asking questions such as the following: Why should we regard this person (or organization or publication) as a source of trustworthy information on the subject in question? What does the idea amount to on its own merits, without the benefit of the testimonial?

--"Trust Us, We're Experts!"

Offe argues that non-democratic types of government -- such as theocratic, sultanistic, dictatorial and authoritarian types -- cannot survive in "modern" societies. He then addresses the question of what makes the consolidation and survival of democracies possible. The underlying question, especially acute in the "new" democracies, is: why should one trust one's fellow citizens?

-- "Democracy and Trust" http://www.theoria.unp.ac.za/ed0012.htm

We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there's too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out. We should stop trusting them right this second.

-- Trust us. we're expert!

We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely....

-- From Pericles' famous funeral oration as reported by Thucydides in The Peloponnesian War.

He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably, that man alone, sire, is, in my judgment, entitled to bear the name of 'happy.' But in every matter it behoves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin.

-- Herodotus, History of the Persian Wars, Book 7 http://web.archive.org/web/20030924011900/http://www.d351gn.com/whuffie/2003_09_14_whuffive.htm----

"The key to eBay's success is trust. Trust between the buyers and the sellers who make up the eBay community, and trust between the user and eBay, the company."

--eBay.com

There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.'

--Romans 3.10-12


The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In so far as scientific research still continues, this is its subject matter.

-- 1984

And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.

Attention, yes. Or infodollars. Or author ratings. Or knowledgeability scores. Top 10 lists. Gold stars. The knowledge that you helped. In northern Tanzania, where researchers from the West like to journey, looking for clues about human behavior, a group called the Hadza hunt large antelope and giraffes. Kristen Hawkes, a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, has studied the men of the Hadza culture. They prefer to hunt large game, instead of easily snaring the plentiful guinea fowl. By going after the more difficult prey, Hadza men are less likely to put meat on the table at the end of the day. And since the meat of a giraffe, for instance, is too much for a single family, the hunter ends up sharing most of his spoils with the community. So why does the hunter make that extra effort, when most of his profits go to others? Why not just focus on bringing home his own bacon? Hawkes has concluded that the prestige the Hadza hunter racks up for his success in bagging the big game pays off in the form of public admiration. It's the glamour of a feat big and good enough for sharing that matters. But of course we could have guessed that. If you've ever been on an expert site, you know: Eating is only half the fun. The rest is egoboo.

-- http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/egoboo.html


Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

--Albert Einstein

"To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer."

--Paul Ehrlich

Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

--Steve Wozniak

The metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident ) is first recorded in the 12th century, attributed to Bernard of Chartres. It is often mistakenly attributed to Isaac Newton.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_shoulders_of_giants

Assumptions about competition in our model are more aptly described as “standing on the shoulders of your peers” than on the shoulders of the giants ...

-- The Economics and Econometrics of Innovation

"standing on the shoulders of your peers--it's what the Internet is all about,"

-- http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.

-- Roy Ash, Office of Management and Budget director under Richard Nixon

Trust is the result of a risk successfully survived.

-- Andy Gibb


This convergence is the big story of our era, maybe of our species. Networks themselves are the millenial manifestation of a new order of being. You have to wonder what the mitochondria thought as they were becoming incorporated into cells. Well, they were just along for the ride.

-- Jon Udell (in Seeing and Tuning Social Networks)

"Information anxiety is produced by the every-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. Information anxiety is the black hole between data and knowledge."

--Richard Saul Wurman

“If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad.”

-- George Bernard Shaw

Non c'ènulla che sia tanto assurdo da non essere stato già affermato dai filosofi.[*]

-- Cicerone

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, Nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when they discover that someone else believes in them and is willing to trust them.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.

-- Aeschylus

Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

-- Booker T. Washington

Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

--Cicero

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

-- Demosthenes

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

-- Samuel Johnson

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

-- Thomas Jefferson:

"Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear."

-- William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

-- Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

[edit] More quotes

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