When a trust is broken then it can hurt worse than a physical injury.

And heal a lot slower. Or not at all.

But it happens to all of us in life sooner or later. So in today’s post I’d like to share timeless wisdom and the most helpful broken trust quotes.

To hopefully make it a bit easier when it happens to you and to aid you in moving on and forward in your life.

And if you want even more helpful inspiration then check out this post with quotes on handling liars and this one with plenty of toxic family quotes.

Relatable Broken Trust Quotes

“I would rather my enemy’s sword pierce my heart then my friend’s dagger stab me in the back.”
– Michele Bardsley

“That’s the thing about trust. It’s like broken glass. You can put it back together, but the cracks are always visible–like scars that never fully heal.”
– Hope Collier

“Trust is a funny thing; it takes such a long time to build, yet it’s broken in a second.”
– Sandie Jones

“Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.”
– Harlan Coben

“Sometimes trusting a friend is the hardest thing to do, even the closest friends can become enemies.”
– James Merrow

“Trust can be broken in just a few seconds, but it takes years to heal.”
– Rei Anthony Albon

“It was a mistake,” you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”
– David Levithan

“I had trusted him. I had even trusted him after he betrayed me. I was too open for my own good. I still gave that man my heart even after he destroyed it.”
– Jacquelin Simon Gunn

“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

“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

“Trust is earned, respect is given, and loyalty is demonstrated. Betrayal of any one of those is to lose all three.”
– Ziad K. Abdelnour

“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

“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

“Mean people don’t bother me. Mean people who disguise themselves as nice people bother me a lot.”
– Cindy Cummings Johnson

“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that reflection.”
– Lady Gaga

“Trust, once lost, could not be easily found. Not in a year, perhaps not even in a lifetime.”
– J.E.B. Spredemann

“We all have defining moments. It is in these moments that we find our true characters. We become heroes or cowards; truth tellers or liars; we go forward or we go backward.”
– Robert Kiyosaki

“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

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
– Albert Einstein

Helpful Broken Trust Quotes

“Every time your heart is broken, a doorway cracks open to a world full of new beginnings, new opportunities.”
– Patti Roberts

“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.”
– Frank Crane

“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

“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

“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

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
– Maya Angelou

“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

“Don’t ever break someone’s trust. Once you do, then nobody wants to do business with you.”
– Robert Budi Hartono

“The strong-minded rise to the challenge of their goals and dreams. The weak-minded become haters.”
– Steve Maraboli

“It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”
– Jodi Picoult

“Even a seemingly good relationship can be destroyed with simple trust issues if not sorted out early.”
– Samuel Zulu

“Breaking someone’s trust is like crumpling up a perfect piece of paper. You can smooth it over but it’s never going to be the same again.”
– Unknown

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
– Walter Winchell

“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

“When your trust is 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

“When a river of tears and a load of grief keep on flowing from a mountain of broken trust, feelings may relentlessly besiege the stronghold of our flesh. Only a timely adjustment with our mental compass can shore up confidence, resilience; and reliance.”
– Erik Pevernagie

“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 Covey

“Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”
– Cheryl Strayed

“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.”
– Buddha

“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

“People inspire you, or they drain you. Pick them wisely.”
– Hans F. Hasen

“Be careful… not all are what they seem. Some people pretend to be the beach, but they’re actually quicksand.”
– Steve Maraboli

“If you’re betrayed, release disappointment at once. By that way, the bitterness has no time to take root.”
– Toba Beta

“The wrong person will give you less than what you’re worth but that doesn’t mean that you have to accept it.”
– Sonya Parker

“Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.”
– Roy T. Bennett

Insightful Broken Trust Quotes

“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

“One who is fed on promises eats from an empty bowl.”
– Marsha Hinds

“A broken glass can’t be repaired neither a broken trust.”
– Paola Rivera

“If offering apologies and making promises fixed broken trust, there’d be no broken trust left to fix.”
– Tim Cole

“Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.”
– Democritus

“When trust is broken, there is not any medicine to recover that again, as it was before, even if you try hard to gain it back.”
– Ehsan Sehgal

“Over time, any deception destroys intimacy, and without intimacy couples cannot have true and lasting love.”
– Bonnie Eaker

“Trust is like an antique, once it’s broken, it can never be replaced.”
– Mouloud Benzadi

“If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault. If they betray you twice, it’s your fault.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.”
– Kamand Kojouri

“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

“Broken people lead to broken hearts. That’s why it’s so important to heal from one relationship before starting another.”
– Mandy Hale

“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

“For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal and betrayal into trust can any human being become part of the truth.”
– Rumi

“Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.”
– Lao Tzu

“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

“Loving words are just a bunch of pretty verbal decorations if they’re not backed up by loving actions.”
– Karen Salmansohn

“To know the good from the bad, study a man or woman’s history of actions, not their record of intentions.”
– Suzy Kassem

“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 better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”
– Samuel Johnson

“You create more space in your life when you turn your excess baggage to garbage.”
– Chinonye J. Chudolue

“You cannot build stairs on a broken pillar; otherwise, you risk consequences; similarly, you cannot constitute trust again on a broken trust that you broke; as a result, you will have to bear the burden of tears.”
– Ehsan Sehgal

“When people cheat in any arena, they diminish themselves – they threaten their own self-esteem and their relationships with others by undermining the trust they have in their ability to succeed and in their ability to be true.”
– Cheryl Hughes

“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

Short Broken Trust Quotes

“Don’t trust the person who has broken faith once.”
– William Shakespeare

“Sometimes it’s not the person who changes, it’s the mask that falls off.”
– Mhaj Porras

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”
– Arthur Miller

“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”
– Stephen King

“Each betrayal begins with trust.”’
– Phish

“The healing of broken trust is a natural process. Trust itself is natural.”
– Mira Kirshenbaum

“If you don’t have trust inside your company, then you can’t transfer it to your customers.”
– Roger Staubach

“Let’s call cheating what it is: a complete betrayal of trust.”
– Greg Behrendt

“Never give your attention to someone who deserves your silence.”
– Emma Xu

“Being trustworthy requires: doing the right thing. And doing things right.”
– Don Peppers

“As technology enables trust in new forms, we’re seeing a decline of trust in institutions.”
– Rachel Botsman

“The best proof of love is trust.”
– Joyce Brothers

“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

“I hate those who play with the feelings of others.”
– Dominic Carey

“Anything is better than lies and deceit.”
– Leo Tolstoy

“Trust but verify.”
– Ronald Reagan

“Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself.”
– Hussein Nishah

“Not everyone can be trusted. I think we all have to be very selective about the people we trust.”
– Shelley Long

Quick and Powerful Broken Trust Quotes

“When your ears hear one thing, but your eyes see another…use your brain.”
– Frank Sonnenberg

“A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.”
– Harold Macmillan

“Betraying someone once can be a mistake. Betraying someone twice is a choice.”
– Garima Soni

“I may have trust issues, but some people seem to have an issue with the responsibility of being trusted.”
– Melchor Lim

“Betray a friend and you’ll often find you have ruined yourself.”
– Aesop

“There’s a time when it’s too late to do what you should have been doing all along.”
– Carolyn Brown

“Trying to make sense of crazy will simply drive you crazy. Let it go.”
– Karen Salmansohn

“People only throw shade on what’s shining.”
– Genereux Philip

“Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.”
– George R.R. Martin

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
– Warren Buffett

“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.”
– Maya Angelou

“Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.”
– John Churton Collins

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Life is too short for fake butter or fake people.”
– Karen Salmansohn

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

“People lie, cheat and bully one another and then wonder why they’re unhappy.”
– Marty Rubin

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
– William Blake

“Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.”
– Lao Tzu

“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.”
– Confucius

“Love all, trust a few.”
– William Shakespeare

If you found these broken trust quotes helpful then please share them with a friend or a family member that may need them on social media or via email.

Want even more motivation and help? Check out this post with quotes on handling not being a priority when you’re in a relationship. Or this one on dealing with and moving on from selfish parents. And also this one with tons of badass quotes for motivation.