Top 35 Robert C. Solomon Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Trust and the ability to identify trustworthiness are not the same thing, although trust and trustworthiness are logically linked.”

— Robert C. Solomon

2. “All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal.”

— Robert C. Solomon

3. “Building trust begins with an appreciation and understanding of trust, but it also requires practice and practices.”

— Robert C. Solomon

4. “True, trust necessarily carries with it uncertainties, but we must force ourselves to think about these uncertainties as possibilities and opportunities, not as liabilities.”

— Robert C. Solomon

5. “The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer.”

— Robert C. Solomon

6. “Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities.”

— Robert C. Solomon

7. “Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.”

— Robert C. Solomon

8. “Whether one sees the world as God’s creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito.”

— Robert C. Solomon

9. “Love can be understood only “from the inside,” as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.”

— Robert C. Solomon

10. “Trust is built step by step, commitment by commitment, on every level.”

— Robert C. Solomon

11. “Building trust means thinking about trust in a positive way.”

— Robert C. Solomon

12. “The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.”

— Robert C. Solomon

13. “Another question has been raised rather widely in Europe, in Japan as well as in the United States is what, to what extent will the euro become a reserve currency.”

— Robert C. Solomon

14. “Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.”

— Robert C. Solomon

15. “Many people are blind to trust, not so much to its benefits as to its nature and the practices that make it possible.”

— Robert C. Solomon

16. “The dollar is currently the principal reserve currency in the world.”

— Robert C. Solomon

17. “Familiarity can no longer be a necessary condition for trust.”

— Robert C. Solomon

18. “Trust is almost always conditional, focused, qualified, and therefore limited.”

— Robert C. Solomon

19. “We also confuse trust with familiarity.”

— Robert C. Solomon

20. “Trust is a skill, one that is an aspect of virtually all human practices, cultures, and relationships.”

— Robert C. Solomon

21. “There’s a stability and growth pact which was agreed for the eleven countries which tries to limit the size of budget deficits among the eleven countries.”

— Robert C. Solomon

22. “There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don’t see that connection at all.”

— Robert C. Solomon

23. “Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.”

— Robert C. Solomon

24. “So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments.”

— Robert C. Solomon

25. “On private transactions, I’ll just go very quickly now, a major difference between the United States and Euroland is that in Europe banks are much more important in financial transactions than in the United States.”

— Robert C. Solomon

26. “Chances are the movements of the euro as against the dollar will be relatively moderate.”

— Robert C. Solomon

27. “The prices of all imports would rise if the dollar depreciates.”

— Robert C. Solomon

28. “There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.”

— Robert C. Solomon

29. “A woman’s death, through much of the same history, was thought to be a simpler thing, preferably quiet and uncomplaining, or tragically in childbirth. Just as women were denied the right and the capacity to a full life, they were denied the right and the capacity to a full death as well.”

— Robert C. Solomon

30. “High kitsch, whatever else may be said of it, cannot be openly dismissed as cheap.”

— Robert C. Solomon

31. “In the United States, securities markets are much more developed than they are in Europe.”

— Robert C. Solomon

32. “The United States as usual has a sizable deficit in the current account of its balance of payments, trade account and other current accounts, current account items.”

— Robert C. Solomon

33. “Back in those days, in the fifties and sixties, countries had balance of payment’s deficits or surpluses, those were reflected much more than today in movements of reserves among countries.”

— Robert C. Solomon

34. “Indeed, some kitsch seems to be flawed by its very perfection, its technical virtuosity and its precise execution, its explicit knowledge of the tradition.”

— Robert C. Solomon

35. “Some countries that are close to Europe that already hold Deutschemarks, clearly would automatically hold euros, those are countries in Eastern Europe mainly, a few countries in Africa.”

— Robert C. Solomon

36. “The major material advantage, financial advantage from having a reserve currency is that between 200 and 300 billion dollar bills, that may be twenty, fifty, hundred dollar bills as well as ones, exist in the world – a lot of them in Russia as you all know I’m sure.”

— Robert C. Solomon

37. “If a currency is to become a growing, an increasing reserve currency, there has to be not only a demand for it there has to be a supply of it.”

— Robert C. Solomon

38. “The thoroughly guilty man has an advantage over all of us; he cannot be found more guilty of anything, since he has already found himself guilty of everything. This may sound like an absurdity – causing oneself extreme pain in order not to feel any number of little pains of lesser guilts and shames, but it has its own logic. A man more easily adapts to what he inflicts upon himself; as to his own judgement, he is already committed to it and willing to live with it.”

— Robert C. Solomon