Tom Stoppard Quotes

Sometimes there's something very comforting about a film unfolding more or less as you expect it to.

A thing that nobody believes cannot be proved too often.

Illusion starts between the ears. If the person doing illusion doesn't believe it, then the audience doesn't believe it. Seeing the picture in your head will allow the audience to see it in their heads.

You do not believe, you only believe that you believe.

The trouble is, you can't properly present something you don't believe in.

I've gone through most of my life not believing anything. Either I know or I don't know, or I think.

Talk about the joys of the unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?

One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.

I think maybe it is better to believe than not to believe. But I couldn't tell you why.

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.

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

There’s no point in believing in things that exist.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Belief is the natural state of things. It is the default option. We just believe. We believe all sorts of things. Belief is natural; disbelief, skepticism, science, is not natural.

Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.

I do not believe in Belief.

People would rather believe than know.

Careful there, Poet. I might start to believe you.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

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.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

[Reinhold] Niebuhr endorsed G.K.Chesterton’s observation that tolerance is the attitude of those who do not believe in anything.

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

Unbelief is safe, because it takes no risk and almost always gets what it expects.