Trust No One Trust No Man in Chinese / Japanese...

The first two characters mean everyone or anyone but change to "no one" with the addition of a negative verb.

The third through fifth characters express the idea of to believe, to believe in, to place trust in, to confide in, or to have faith in.

The last character makes the sentence negative (without the last character, this would mean "trust everyone", with that last character it's "trust no one").

This is as close as you can get to the phrase "trust no man" in Japanese, though no gender is specified.

Note: Because this selection contains some special Japanese Hiragana characters, it should be written by a Japanese calligrapher.

無法信任 is the kind of thing you expect to hear in a spy movie.

"Trust no one, 007!"

The first two characters express the idea of "no way" or "cannot".

The last two characters mean "trust".

The characters must go in this order due to Chinese grammar issues and in order to sound natural.

Note: 無法信任 is not an ancient Chinese phrase by any means. It's just that we received a lot of requests for this phrase.

無法信任 is as close as you can get to the phrase "trust no man", though technically no gender is specified.

This is a nice Asian proverb if you know a vintner or wine seller - or wine lover - although the actual meaning might not be exactly what you think or hope.

The literal meaning is that someone drinking wine is more likely to let the truth slip out. It can also be translated as, "People speak their true feelings after drinking alcohol".

It's long-believed in many parts of Asia that one can not consciously hold up a facade of lies when getting drunk, and therefore the truth will come out with a few drinks.

I've had the experience where a Korean man would not trust me until I got drunk with him (I was trying to gain access to the black market in North Korea which is tough to do as an untrusted outsider) - so I think this idea is still well-practiced in many Asian countries.

VS

Please note that there are two common ways to write the second character of this phrase. The way it's written will be left up to the mood of the calligrapher, unless you let us know that you have a certain preference.

See Also:  Honesty | Truth