Anthony Trollope Quotes

We are pleased with one who instantly assents to our opinions, but we love a proselyte.

You can tell if someone is about social intercourse or just about browbeating somebody with their opinion. It's no fun arguing with a closed-minded person.

For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Why should I try to make you believe the things I believe in?

Argument is conclusive … but … it does not remove doubt.

Since opinions do not find in me a ready soil to thrust and spread their roots into, no premise shocks me, no belief hurts me, no matter how opposite to my own they may be.

If you would convince others, seem open to conviction yourself.

I try and listen to what the people I respect are talking about, what they believe and why.

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.

And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray.

Skepticism may undermine beliefs, but never belief.

I have beliefs, of course, like everyone-but I don't always believe in them.

If you don't believe in a line, then you come off as the loser.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

I don't want them to believe me, I just want them to think.

if you don't have doubts you're either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants-in-the-pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.

Though as he'd say, what is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?

The true work of a critic is not to make his hearer believe him, but agree with him.

Belief is tricky because left to its own devices, it can court a kind of surety, an unquestioning allegiance that fears doubt and destroys difference.

I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.

Without sounding overly pompous about it, I don't really trust certainty in anything, actually. Especially as I get older. Except love. I'm certain of love, I guess.