Stephen Fry Quotes
- All Quotes
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Money and fame are trashy and don't guarantee happiness, but we all refuse really to know it.
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Compromise is a stalling between two fools.
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What other developed democracy has such a ridiculous and squalid history of intolerance? From the imprisonment and roasting of heretics, witches and poachers, to the censorship of literature, art and television: from St Alban through Wilde, Joyce and Lawrence I think we can point with pride to as grim a catalogue of intemperate, bigoted repression as any nation on earth.
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There's no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.
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Oh, it takes a lot for me to walk out of a film.
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If there is a sort of national American emotion I would call it optimism. If there is an English one I would call it embarrassment - not even pessimism - just sheer shame, embarrassment and confusion.
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Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.
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I flicked my eyes over to Steve again and saw him straighten. He would need a diversion just to start. “Explanations?” I bellowed. “Explanations? There’s your explanation…there!” I stabbed a finger dramatically towards the far corner of the room. Pathetic, really. I mean, talk about the oldest trick in the book. But it’s a good book, and the trick would have been cut from subsequent editions if it didn’t sometimes work.
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If we empower ourselves with responsibility over our actions, responsibility over our destinies and responsibility for directing and maintaining and creating our own ethical and moral frameworks, which is the most important thing really isn’t it because perhaps the greatest insult to humanism is this idea that mankind needs a god in order to have a moral framework.
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But if one could go back in time, I'd love to have been directed by Howard Hawks, who's one of my great heroes. One of the greatest directors there ever was. He directed probably one of the greatest westerns of all time in 'Rio Bravo'.
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That's alright," said Hugo. "I've got some wine" Which was about all he seemed to have. He poured out two mugfuls. "Very nice," said Adrian, sipping appreciatively. "I wonder how they got the cat to sit on the bottle." "It's cheap, that's the main thing.
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Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?
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As humourless a lump of dough as ever held a torchlight vigil outside the South African Embassy or stuck an AIDS awareness ribbon on an unwilling first-nighter.
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But happiness is no respecter of persons.
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Entry is not equivalent to possession.
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I've always believed that everything that is said from authority is either the authority of one's own heart, one's own brain, one's own reading, one's own trust, but not the authority of someone who claims it because they're speaking for God and they know the truth because it's written in a book. That, essentially, is where I come from. In a sense, tolerance is my religion. Reason is my religion.
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Zoologists have reckoned there are up to at least 750 species of animal that have been observed exhibiting same-sex behaviour, or gender role transformation (which is very common in a wide range of fauna). There is only one species on earth, however, which has exhibited homophobia or transphobia. And that is the species homo sapiens sapiens. Us. So let's not allow the foolish, ignorant or bigoted ever to use words like "natural."
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I may have looked happy but inside I was hopelessly depressed.
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To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence
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Everything had been based on a kind of certainty, a sense of man at the center of things, a sense of order and hierarchy. And suddenly, almost simultaneously, extraordinary discoveries are made.
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When Steampunk meets adventure and adventure meets comedy and comedy meets ingenuity and ingenuity meets charm and charm meets wonder and wonder meets pleasure the result is a Triumph. Dr Grordbort is the future. And the past. Which makes an ideal present.
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My secret is that I have never thought there is a secret to anything in life. Passion. Love. Drive. Work. Work. Work. Dull but true.
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I have always been an impassioned advocate for the works of Shakespeare. I regard him as one of the most complete miracles of his or any other age.
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You don't get depressed because bad things happen to you. That's getting pissed off and annoyed. That's reasonable. Someone hits you in the face you go ow, you know that's... but depression is something that happens like weather to you inside you.