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
Authentic Betrayal Of Trust quotations
Four characteristics constitute anyone who possesses them a sheer hypocrite, and anyone who possesses one of them possesses a characteristic of hypocrisy till he abandons it: when he is trusted he betrays his trust, when he talks he lies, when he makes a covenant he acts treacherously and when he quarrels he abuses.

The betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo.


The chief internal enemies of any state are not spies nor saboteurs nor the paid agents of foreign governments. They are, on the contrary, those myriads of public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.
Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.
Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.
To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.
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.

Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated.
Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.
The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal.
You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.
When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
The worst pain in the world goes beyond the physical.
Even further beyond any other emotional pain one can feel. It is the betrayal of a friend.
Each betrayal begins with trust.

It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.
There's a sort of rage a man feels when he's been deceived where he most trusted. It compares to no other anger.
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
If people speak or act with evil thoughts, pain follows them. If people speak or act with pure thoughts, happiness follows them, like a shadow that never leaves them.
Let's call cheating what it is: a complete betrayal of trust.

The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.
It's hard to tell who has your back, from who has it long enough just to stab you in it.
We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal.
There are so many ways to betray someone.
You can whisper behind his back. You can deceive him on purpose. You can deliver him into the hands of his enemy, when he trusts you. You can break a promise. The question is, if you do any of those things, are you also betraying yourself?
I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of [CIA] sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.
I write about the things that happen to us all.
The things that are tough, the things that matter, from a loved one fighting an illness, to losing a job, being betrayed by somebody you trust, all parts of the human condition. No one is exempt from those things.
For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.
I often said that never in the history of the world did one man receive so much faith and trust as Hitler. Similary, no one has ever betrayed so many people and abused so much good faith as he did.