Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.

The saying warns that universal praise is often a sign not of generosity but of unreliability. Someone who “speaks well of everybody” may be flattering to manipulate, avoiding honest judgment to preserve popularity, or lacking the moral and intellectual discrimination needed to tell virtue from vice. Implicitly, trust depends on candor and the courage to make distinctions—even at the cost of offending. The aphorism also critiques a social habit: when approval becomes automatic, words lose evidentiary value. In that sense, the quote is less about cynicism than about the ethics of speech—praise should be earned, specific, and truthful.