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About this quote

What does it mean?
Distrusting everyone prevents you from spotting real enemies.
In plain terms
Paranoia blinds you to danger.
What can you take from it?
Trust cautiously to protect yourself.

Where it applies

  • team building
  • security
  • personal safety

Putting it to work

  • balance trust
  • learn to read signs

Questions to consider

  • Who can you trust?
  • Why do you distrust?

Another view

Trusting too much is also risky.

More from Nathaniel Hawthorne

  1. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.

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  2. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

    Permalink to quote #45
  3. There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and …

    Permalink to quote #42

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