Trust is more a kind of acceptance that, whether something is true or not, you will act as if you believe it is true. You do this because either you believe it is true, or some other reason compels you to act this way. Believe is more your thought that something is true, whether or not it is. Let's say you had a hungry lion on one side of a very old bridge over a high canyon. You don't think the bridge is safe, but the lion will eat you. Regardless of your belief, you have to trust the bridge, just because it is the safer of the two.

http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic9134.html Someone asked a similar question on that forum. There's definitely a difference between the two. Here's one example I just thought of. Imagine a teacher that gave a book to read as an assignment, and saying to one if his student "I trust you read that book", that could (but not necessarily) mean something like "Of course you read that book ? So if I asked you to summarize it right now there wouldn't be any problem right ?" Feel the scepticism there ? But if he says "I believe you read that book" it would be more like "I gave you that an assignement some time ago, so normally you should have read it by now", just a statement without any judgement from the teacher's part. See the difference ? And then there's a difference between 'believe something' and 'believe IN something', you believe a fact is real (like Alexandre said); you believe IN ...often implies something more abstract like (I believe in God... I think there are such examples in the link I posted). Trust often relates to the confidence you have in a person.

You can believe some fact is real and you can trust some person because he or she is honest and has believable attitudes.