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Having your trust broken is never a fun experience.
When someone hurts you in this way, it tends to manifest a whole range of negative emotions. Trust is a fragile thing, and it can make us stop and question everything once it’s been broken.
Whenever you go through any experience like this, it’s important to check in with yourself, as any resentment or unresolved issues can have a negative influence on your life.
We’ve compiled this bunch of broken trust quotes to help you feel better and move on and grow from whoever has hurt you.
Before we get to the quotes, let’s look more into broken trust.
Why Read Broken Trust Quotes?
Why do we say that trust is broken? Our language recognizes that trust is delicate, as it needs care and attention. Much like a fine piece of pottery, when trust breaks, it either takes a long time to repair or it’s not possible at all.
Trust is something integral to our lives. Could you imagine a life where you couldn’t trust anyone? It would be mentally and physically exhausting.
Humans have always placed a premium on trust, and even ancient Roman generals understood that their soldier’s trust was often the key to victory or defeat.
So how will reading broken trust quotes help you? When betrayal of any sort happens it can solicit unexpected responses on our part. We can feel angry not just at the people or person responsible but also ourselves.
These quotes are compiled to help you keep perspective and remain grounded and centered. We can’t control what other people do to us, but we can control how we respond.
No matter how people have betrayed you or hurt you if you approach things with awareness and consciousness, it can become a force for positive growth in your life.
Let’s take a look at the quotes.
- “Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.” – Lao Tzu
- “Betraying someone once can be a mistake. Betraying someone twice is a choice.” – Garima Soni
- “Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once.”- William Shakespeare
- “Even a seemingly good relationship can be destroyed with simple trust issues if not sorted out early.” – Samuel Zulu
- “One who is fed on promises eats from an empty bowl.” – Marsha Hinds
- “Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother f*cker’s reflection.” – Lady Gaga
- “Trust can be broken in just a few seconds, but it takes years to heal.” – Rei Anthony Albon
- “If you have three people in your life that you can trust, you can consider yourself the luckiest person in the whole world.” – Selena Gomez
- “When trust is broken, there is not any medicine to recover that again, as it was before, even you try hard to gain back” – Ehsan Sehgal
- “A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.” – Harold Macmillan
- “The problem with trust is that if it is broken, then all acts committed by the perpetrator come under the purview of suspicion.” – Ravi Subramanian
- “If you give your trust to a person who does not deserve it, you actually give him the power to destroy you.” – Khaled Saad
- “Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “There are three signs of a hypocrite: when he speaks he speaks lies, when he makes a promise he breaks it, and when he is trusted he betrays his trust.” – Elijah Muhammad
- “Being trustworthy requires: Doing the right thing. And doing things right.” – Don Peppers
- “Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.” – John Churton Collins
- “It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.” – David Levithan
- “Trust is built when someone is vulnerable and not taken advantage of.” – Bob Vanourek
- “Trust is like an antique, once it’s broken, it can never be replaced.” – Mouloud Benzadi
- “Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime.It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.” – Sherrilyn Kenyon
- “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake
- “If someone breaks your trust, it just shows that they have been pretenders all along.” – Samuel Zulu
- “Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” – Stephen R. Covey
- “For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” – Suzanne Collins
- “If you build the faith to trust a friend as God, then your heart can never be broken.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
- “Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.” – Lao Tzu
- “A broken glass can’t be repaired neither a broken trust.” – Paola Rivera
- “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.” – Frank Crane
- “The healing of broken trust is a natural process. Trust itself is natural.” – Mira Kirshenbaum
- “Love all, trust a few.” – William Shakespeare
- “Trust is that tiny thread that holds your brand together; when trust is torn or tampered with, you will have a broken brand; your business will fall.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive
- “Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.” – Ziad K. Abdelnour
- “Never trust someone who lies to you. Never lie to someone who trusts you.” – Mandy
- “Don’t ever break someone’s trust. Once you do, then nobody wants to do business with you.” – Robert Budi Hartono
- “If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” – Aesop
- “It's hard to tell who has your back, from who has it long enough just to stab you in it….” – Nicole Richie
- “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.” – Malcolm X
- “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him.” – Henry L. Stimson
- “It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”- Jodi Picoult
- “Let's call cheating what it is: a complete betrayal of trust.” – Greg Behrendt
- “There’s ways you can trust an enemy you can’t always trust a friend. An enemy’s never going to betray your trust.” – Daniel Abraham
- “The best proof of love is trust.” – Joyce Brothers
- “You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.” – Catherynne M. Valente
- “I love you” is far different from “I trust you” – Shelaxai
- “Trust is a funny thing; it takes such a long time to build, yet it’s broken in a second.” – Sandie Jones
- “If someone betrays you once, it's their fault. If they betray you twice, it's your fault.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
- “If you're betrayed, release disappointment at once. By that way, the bitterness has no time to take root.” – Toba Beta
- “There’s a time when it’s too late to do what you should have been doing all along.” – Carolyn Brown
- “Without trust, we don’t truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team.” – Stephen Covey
- “It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” – Confucius
- “Trust was a double-edged sword. It could give you hope, but it could cut you in an instant when it was broken.” – Tiffany King
- “If you don't have trust inside your company, then you can't transfer it to your customers.” – Roger Staubach
- “Trust is not established in the absence of betrayal, but in those whose betrayal is least.” – Wes Fesler
- “I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken, and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I lived.” – Margaret Mitchell
- “Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.” – Harlan Coben
- “People that have trust issues only need to look in the mirror. There they will meet the one person that will betray them the most.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.” – Thomas Huxley
- “Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” – Arthur Miller
- “Betrayal is common for men with no conscience.” – Toba Beta
- “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein
- “To conquer the unknown you must trust.” – Yogi Bhajan
- “For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal And betrayal into trust Can any human being become part of the truth.” – Rumi
- “Trust but verify.” – Ronald Reagan
- “Broken trust can heal.” – Mira Kirshenbaum
- “When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface.” – Cassandra Clare
- “I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.” – Maya Angelou
- “I believe if you want to be trusted, you have to trust first. If you do that, you will be betrayed sometimes. But the value of engendering trust is greater than the cost of being betrayed sometimes.” – Mark Leslie
- “Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the letter a mark of prudence.” – Democritus
- “I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.” – Blaise Pascal
- “You need a lot of things in any organization, but one of the critical things is trust. When you lose trust and you feel betrayed, and it's not a matter of judgment.” – Arthur Blank
- “When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.” – Paula Stokes
- “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” – Warren Buffett
- “Broken trust is like melted chocolate. No matter how hard you try to freeze it. you can never return it to the original shape.” – Anonymous
- “Trust, once lost, could not be easily found. Not in a year, perhaps not even in a lifetime.” – J.E.B. Spredemann
- “Pride had kept her running when love had betrayed her.” – Susan Elizabeth Phillips
- “When your trust in someone is broken, you will inevitably experience shock, denial, anger, and sadness, feelings that are, in many ways, akin to the mourning process following a death.” – Dr. Jane Greer
- “Broken trust is hard to heal because we're not even trying to heal it. We're just trying to make ourselves feel safe.” – Mira Kirshenbaum
- “As technology enables trust in new forms, we’re seeing a decline of trust in institutions.” – Rachel Botsman
- “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” – Maya Angelou
- “Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.” – George R.R. Martin
- “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
- “I would rather my enemy's sword pierce my heart then my friend's dagger stab me in the back.” – Michele Bardsley
- “All of us must act selfishly to Iearn charity, must lie to learn honor, must betray and be betrayed to learn to value trust and commitment.” – Bill Vaughan
- “Every time your heart is broken, a doorway cracks open to a world full of new beginnings, new opportunities.” – Patti Roberts
- “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” – Ernest Hemingway
- “It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.” – Sara Teasdale
87 Broken Trust Quotes for When People Hurt You
Final Thoughts on Broken Trust Quotes
That brings us to the end of our quotes compilation. We hope that they can give you some inspiration or help you navigate the tumultuous waters of broken trust.
While it’s never a nice thing to deal with betrayal or misplaced trust, it’s something that the vast majority of us will encounter at some time in our lives.
In the meantime, check out these 102 trust affirmations to get you through uncertain times.
And if you want more inspirational quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 71 You Are Worthy Quotes to Know You’re Enough
- 101 Stay Strong Quotes to Be Positive During a Crisis
- 89 Warrior Quotes to Help You Fight Through Life
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
Tom Smith is a creative writer with over 6 years of professional experience. He discovered the joy of writing after covering some furniture in his childhood home with graffiti. In later years, he got himself a BA in creative writing and hasn’t looked back. After discovering the power of positive thinking and discovering the spiritual side of life, he believes it's a huge privilege to be able to write about all things personal development.
