Top 40 Betrayal Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Each betrayal begins with trust.”

— Martin Luther

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

— Ziad K. Abdelnour

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Relationship Quotes, Values Quotes

3. “The fewer the friends, the fewer the chances of betrayal.”

— Tupac Shakur

Also featured in: Trust No One Quotes, Fake Friends Quotes

4. “That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.”

— Amy Tan

5. “The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Also featured in: Liars Quotes, Karma Quotes

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

— Greg Behrendt

7. “Always seek less turbulent skies. Hurt. Fly above it. Betrayal. Fly above it. Anger. Fly above it. You are the one who is flying the plane.”

— Marianne Williamson

Also featured in: Inner Peace Quotes, Hurt Quotes, Sky Quotes

8. “Even loss and betrayal can bring us awakening.”

— Buddha

9. “We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.”

— Tennessee Williams

10. “Just because they say they’re praying for you in your face, doesn’t mean they aren’t laughing at your struggle behind your back.”

— Trent Shelton

11. “Betrayal answers betrayal, the mask of love is answered by the disappearance of love.”

— Albert Camus

12. “Betrayal, abandonment, deceit and manipulation.”

— Bill Cosby

13. “Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Real Quotes

14. “Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.”

— Warsan Shire

15. “Some people are willing to betray years of friendship just to get a little bit of the spotlight.”

— Lauren Conrad

16. “In a restless heart the seed of betrayal lay.”

— Bruce Springsteen

17. “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

— Joan Didion

18. “I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.”

— Veronica Roth

19. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Interesting Quotes, Short Quotes, Values Quotes, Quality Quotes

20. “In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.”

— Immanuel Kant

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Principles And Laws, Guilt Quotes

21. “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”

— Robert W. Service

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Honesty Quotes, Quotes About Trust

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

— Confucius

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Friendship Quotes, Virtue Quotes, Quotes About Trust

23. “The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one’s own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.”

— C.G. Jung

24. “I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.”

— Edward Abbey

25. “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”

— Sigmund Freud

26. “For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal And betrayal into trust Can any human being become part of the truth.”

— Rumi

27. “I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray.”

— Albert Camus

28. “But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Sadness Quotes

29. “While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one’s own well-being.”

— Marianne Williamson

30. “My heart is the throne of the Beloved, the Beloved the heart’s destiny: Whoever breaks another’s heart will find no homecoming in this world or any other.”

— Yunus Emre

31. “The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.”

— James Baldwin

32. “It is undoubtedly easier to believe in absolutes, follow blindly, mouth received wisdom. But that is self-betrayal.”

— John Ralston Saul

33. “I think given the choice between loving Mare – betrayal included – and never knowing her, I’d chose love. I risked, and I lost, but the risk was still worth it.”

— Brandon Sanderson

34. “The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation.”

— Charles Bukowski

35. “The most dangerous follower is the one whose defection would destroy the whole party: hence, the best follower.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

36. “It is most true, stylus virum arguit, – our style betrays us.”

— Robert A. Burton

37. “To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery – even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness – is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.”

— André Breton

38. “Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.”

— Henry David Thoreau

39. “Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity.”

— William Hazlitt

40. “I find life itself provides ample and sufficient tests of my valor and mettle: illness; betrayal; fruitless searches for love; working for the abusive, the insane, and the despotic. All challenges easily as thrilling to me as scrambling over icy rock in a pair of barely adequate boots.”

— David Rakoff