Life & Wisdom Quote by Martin C. Smith

There is a small, wicked astonishment in this line: the world likes honesty so much it forgets to be careful. Smith isn’t praising transparency; he’s pointing out a cognitive loophole. If you announce your intentions plainly, people often treat the announcement itself as proof you can’t be dangerous. Confession becomes camouflage.

The phrasing matters. “Always been struck” frames it as a recurring bruise, a lesson learned the hard way or, more intriguingly, a tactic observed in action. “Unsuspicious” is sharper than “trusting.” Trust implies judgment; unsuspiciousness implies default settings, the mental laziness of assuming you’re safe until evidence forces an update. Then comes the kicker: “if you tell them what you’re about.” It’s colloquial, almost friendly - the kind of phrase used to establish rapport - but here it’s doing double duty as a warning label that no one reads.

The subtext is about how people process risk through narratives, not data. A declared motive provides a story that feels complete. It also triggers a social norm: decent people don’t accuse someone who’s being “straight with them.” Suspicion becomes rude, paranoid, impolite. In that sense, the line is less about gullibility than about civility as a vulnerability.

Contextually, it has the clean menace of a writer’s observation (and a noir-ish one): the con, the politician, the manipulator, even the toxic coworker thrives not by hiding, but by stating their program out loud - counting on the audience’s desire to believe that clarity equals character.