Tom Stoppard Quotes

It is commonly said that men are forward to believe whatever is connected with their own interest. This in common cases is true; but it is also true, that when some very great and unexpected good news is brought to us, we find it very difficult to credit it.

Now that he has disavowed as outright lies many of the stories he told himself, it's hard to know what to make of those who still insist that David Brock had it right the first time.

People never believe you.

I have a very highly developed sense of denial.

Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.

There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

The two things that hit you when you meet someone are, first, how they're visually put together and then, what they tell you with the tone of their voice - whether or not they're to be taken seriously.

I am willing to believe, but I do not have the gift of faith. I'm skeptical.

We are responsible for our incredulity.

Indeed, Rusbridger has finessed for the Guardian a certain willing suspension of disbelief and is able to credibly maintain conceits and moral standards to which his own behaviour hardly conforms.

I'm very good at denial.

It is never persuasive to argue that you are not the kind of person who does what you are actually doing.

I couldn't believe it. It was unbelievable, that's why. My face was like a frozen fish finger. All rigid and pale. (But obviously not with breadcrumbs on it.)

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

I have a skeptical and cranky side, and I'm forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they choose to believe.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

I don't know if I could, like, see a face and know what the face of beauty looks like, but after I've seen it I know if I've felt like it was beauty.

For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.

That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity.

I did not write half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed