Having someone betray our trust can leave us feeling heartbroken and convinced that we can never trust the guilty party, or anyone else, again.
To me, broken trust is just like dropping and breaking our favorite coffee mug — once we collect all the pieces from the floor and glue them back, the mug looks nice but the cracks still show.
And the question goes, does it make any sense to drink from the mug, or it’s time to throw it away because the cracks may break it again?
All this got me thinking about broken trust, and whether it is worth rebuilding it.
So I searched the web to discover some wise broken trust quotes that can serve as a great inspiration to me, to you, and to anyone whose trust has been broken or who has compromised someone’s trust.
Let’s have a look!
Top 10 Broken Trust Quotes
1. “Trust is a funny thing; it takes such a long time to build, yet it’s broken in a second.” — Sandie Jones
2. “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
3. “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
4. “Trust cannot be broken only taken back from people not worthy of it.” ― Jackie Viramontez
5. “Trust, once lost, could not be easily found. Not in a year, perhaps not even in a lifetime.” — J.E.B. Spredemann
6. “Trust is like blood pressure. It’s silent, vital to good health, and if abused it can be deadly.” — Frank Sonnenberg
7. “The healing of broken trust is a natural process. Trust itself is natural.” — Mira Kirshenbaum
8. “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.” — Frank Crane
9. “Trust is something that is difficult to establish. It is very fragile that needs to be taken care of. Once trust breaks or shatters into pieces, it is very difficult to rebuild it.” — K. Cunningham
10. “A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.” — Harold Macmillan
Inspirational Quotes On Trust
1. “Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.” — Roy T. Bennett
2. “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
3. “Being trustworthy requires: Doing the right thing. And doing things right.” — Don Peppers
4. “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
5. “If you’re betrayed, release disappointment at once. By that way, the bitterness has no time to take root.” — Toba Beta
6. “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
7. “If you build the faith to trust a friend as God, then your heart can never be broken.” — Michael Bassey Johnson
8. “Love all, trust a few.” — William Shakespeare
9. “It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.” — Confucius
10. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” — Maya Angelou
11. “Consider everyone trustworthy until they prove otherwise.” — Ram Mohan
12. “To conquer the unknown you must trust.” — Yogi Bhajan
13. “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
14. “Never trust someone who lies to you. Never lie to someone who trusts you.” — Mandy
15. “Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.” — Democritus
16. “If someone breaks your trust, it just shows that they have been pretenders all along.” — Samuel Zulu
17. “Trust but verify.” — Ronald Reagan
18. “Don’t ever break someone’s trust. Once you do, then nobody wants to do business with you.” — Robert Budi Hartono
19. “When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface.” — Cassandra Clare
20. “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
Wise Quotes About Betrayal Of Trust
1. “Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.” — Ziad K. Abdelnour
2. “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
3. “Betrayal is the worst… and the key to moving past it is to identify what led up to it in the first place.” — Charles J. Orlando
4. “It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”- Jodi Picoult
5. “Betraying someone once can be a mistake. Betraying someone twice is a choice.” — Garima Soni
6. “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
7. “Trust is not established in the absence of betrayal, but in those whose betrayal is least.” — Wes Fesler
8. “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
9. “Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” — Arthur Miller
10. “If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault. If they betray you twice, it’s your fault.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
11. “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
12. “Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.” — George R.R. Martin
13. “Betrayal annihilates trust. The more trust there is to begin with, and the more deception is involved, the more damage is done.” ― Sandra Lee Dennis
14. “Betrayal is common for men with no conscience.” — Toba Beta
15. “For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal and betrayal into trust can any human being become part of the truth.” — Rumi
16. “I would rather my enemy’s sword pierce my heart than my friend’s dagger stab me in the back.” — Michele Bardsley
17. “For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” — Suzanne Collins
18. “Let’s call cheating what it is: a complete betrayal of trust.” — Greg Behrendt
19. “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
20. “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
Life Quotes About Breaking Trust
1. “Trust can be broken in just a few seconds, but it takes years to heal.” — Rei Anthony Albon
2. “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
3. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” — Albert Einstein
4. “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
See also: 100 Best Quotes About Hypocrites To Know If You Are One
5. “Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.” — Harlan Coben
6. “When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.” — Paula Stokes
7. “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
8. “One who is fed on promises eats from an empty bowl.” — Marsha Hinds
9. “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” — Ernest Hemingway
10. “Trust is like a piece of paper, once it’s crumpled it can’t be perfect again.” — Miranda Lee
11. “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
12. “Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks.” — Isaac Watts
13. “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
14. “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
15. “Broken trust is like melted chocolate. No matter how hard you try to freeze it, you can never return it to the original shape.” — Unknown
16. “Trust is like an antique, once it’s broken, it can never be replaced.” — Mouloud Benzadi
17. “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
18. “There are ways you can trust an enemy you can’t always trust a friend. An enemy’s never going to betray your trust.” — Daniel Abraham
19. “A broken glass can’t be repaired neither a broken trust.” — Paola Rivera
20. “If you give your trust to a person who does not deserve it, you actually give him the power to destroy you.” — Khaled Saad
Trust Issues Quotes
1. “Even a seemingly good relationship can be destroyed with simple trust issues if not sorted out early.” — Samuel Zulu
2. “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
3. “Trust is hard to come by. That’s why my circle is small and tight. I’m kind of funny about making new friends.” — Eminem
4. “I love you” is far different from “I trust you.” — Shelaxai
5. “It’s the same old story you’ve heard a thousand times. Somebody’s trust gets broken. Somebody’s left behind.” — Travis Tritt
6. “Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.” — William Penn
7. “Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.” — John Churton Collins
8. “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
9. “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.” — Maya Angelou
10. “I may have trust issues, but some people seem to have an issue with the responsibility of being trusted.” ― Melchor Lim
11. “What’s burned is burned, but what’s broken can heal. And broken trust in a relationship is not like a house on fire.” — Mira Kirshenbaum
12. “We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone — but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.” — Walter Anderson
13. “Broken trust forces us, first, to acknowledge a painful reality we may have chosen to ignore, then, to make some difficult decisions.” — Dr. Jane Greer
14. “To forgive someone who hurt you is easy but to trust them again is next to impossible.” — Anurag Prakash Ray
15. “Not everyone can be trusted. I think we all have to be very selective about the people we trust.” — Shelley Long
16. “I believe everything happens for a reason. People change so you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so you can appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself.” — Marilyn Monroe
17. “It’s hard to trust when all you have from the past is evidence of why you shouldn’t.” — Unknown
18. “Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.” — Lao Tzu
19. “Trust is tough. Once trust has been broken by multiple people on multiple occasions, believing in anyone or anything becomes increasingly difficult. Much of the skepticism of our world can be traced back to broken trust.” — Dillon Burroughs
20. “A single lie discovered is enough to create doubt in every truth expressed.” — Unknown
The Bottom Line
As you could see, most of these broken trust quotes agree that once lost, trust is hard to be rebuilt again.
And I agree that changing these beliefs and regrowing a betrayed trust is extremely challenging.
However, I am an eternal optimist who believes that there are those who are worthy of ‘our hard’, worthy of our forgiveness.
Thus, I think we should give our guilty party just a tiny dose of our forgiveness and see what we get. That’s when we’ll know if they are worthy of being trusted again!
Read next: 150 Betrayal Quotes To Help You Cope And Grow Stronger
