A Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people. — © Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Our own distrust gives a fair pretence for the knavery of other people.
Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.
Knavery is ever suspicious of knavery.
The reason we do not let our friends see the very bottom of our hearts is not so much distrust of them as distrust of ourselves.
Distrust that man who tells you to distrust. He takes the measure of his own small soul, and thinks the world no larger.
Certainly each side - the 'absolutists' and the 'constructivists' or 'humanists', as I've labelled them - accuses the other of hubris, and lays claim to humility. I see hubris on both sides: a pretence that we could ascend to an objective account of the world, on the one hand, and a pretence that we have the resources to live and act without a sense of there being something to which we answerable, on the other. So both sides are 'villains'.
I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.
In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.
In our daily life, we encounter people we are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying ere is so their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.
Right now we have millions of people in our country who are suffering in isolation, thinking that they are the only ones who are dealing with drug addiction, who don't realize that on their own block there are other people and families. They think they're alone and they think they're going to be judged and they don't want to talk about it. But when people do come forward and share their stories it's incredibly liberating, and it gives other people permission to tell their stories too.
Often, we are quick to find blame with others but yet are unable to give constructive responses. There seems to be a tendency to doubt almost everything. Do we not have faith in our own people's strengths and in our institutions? Can we afford distrust amongst ourselves?
The subject of contemporary art should include a political dimension, the distrust contemporary art has towards the existing order. One manifestation of this distrust is the mechanical dichotomization between art's form and its political content; the other is the institutionalizing tendency of anti-institutionalization. We almost never resist ourselves - the part of ourselves that has been institutionalized. We have occupied the word "resistance" and have become its owner, while "resistance" has become our servant. Thus, we own "resistance" and occupy it as a position of power.
All zeal for a reform, that gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence.
We cannot use a double standard for measuring our own and other people's policies. Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantees of those practiced in our own country.
The gift art gives us is that instead of seeing only our own world, we see into other times, which offers a window into other cultures and sensibilities.
For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn't know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.
We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people - history has made us all South Africans.
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