Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.
Interpretation
Trust is based on evidence and experience, while faith is believing without proof. True friendship is built on mutual trust.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens distinguishes between trust and faith, emphasizing that trust is grounded in shared experiences and reliability, while faith often involves a blind belief in someone without assurance. He stresses that a true friend is someone you can trust, implying that placing faith in people without a solid foundation can lead to disappointment, thereby highlighting the importance of establishing trust in relationships.
In practice
This quote could be referenced in a speech about the importance of building trust in friendships.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.
Sometimes I say to people, 'Do you think you're easy to live with?' People who are single. And the ones who say, 'Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty easy to live with; it's just a question of finding the right person,' massive alarm bell rings in my mind.
Our rewards in life will always be in exact proportion to the amount of consideration we show toward others.
Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial...C hristianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.
It was just enough to sit there without words.
In 2012, a five-year-old girl in Shandong province described to me how ten officials had chased her six-months-pregnant mother through the fields to prevent the birth of the family's second child, a boy. She died during the procedure.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.