Daily Inspiration Quote by Tom Hanks

"Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour"

Tom Hanks, Actor

About this Quote

Hanks leans into the gentlest kind of realism: not the romantic fantasy that people are perfectly knowable, but the grown-up admission that they aren’t. The line works because it starts by deflating a common social craving - total access, total certainty - and then pivots to a practical ethic. We can’t solve each other like puzzles, so the real choice isn’t between knowledge and ignorance; it’s between mistrust and a workable, humane default setting.

The subtext is almost a rebuke to the age of hot takes and instant diagnoses. “Suspicion” isn’t framed as prudence; it’s framed as a posture, a habit you adopt when ambiguity makes you anxious. Hanks offers “open mind” and “a dash of optimism” as disciplined alternatives, not naive ones. The “dash” matters: optimism is a seasoning, not the whole meal. He’s not selling blind faith in people; he’s arguing that cynicism is often just laziness dressed as sophistication.

Then there’s “candour,” the most interesting word in the sentence. It implies that openness isn’t just how you interpret others; it’s how you show up yourself. If no one can fully know you, the least you can do is be legible on purpose. Coming from an actor - a professional manufacturer of believable selves - this reads as a quiet cultural corrective: authenticity isn’t a pure state, it’s a practice. In a world where everyone performs, candour becomes the rare performance that lowers the stakes instead of raising them.

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Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is a Actor from USA.

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