Tom Stoppard Quotes
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The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.
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Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.
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Once rehearsals are done the writer really doesn't have a function on the set. If the script is stabilized, then the writer becomes a celebrity tourist visiting the set, trying not to get in the way. It's very good for the ego, to go visit a film set if you are the writer, because they give you a special chair, and tell you where you can sit to watch the monitor. They make you feel special, but at the same time, they make it perfectly plain that you are irrelevant!
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The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
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Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.
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If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.
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If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks into beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.
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The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority.
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You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.
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Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?
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Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light.
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Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?
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A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.
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We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.
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If you were handed power on a plate you'd be left fighting over a plate.
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Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!
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The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
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You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.
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Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.
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Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight. Equilibrium is pragmatic. You have to get everything into proportion. You compensate, rebalance yourself so that you maintain your angle to your world. When the world shifts, you shift.
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I didn't feel good about cutting out parts of very famous speeches, ... You think you somehow need all of it or you get none of it, but that's not true.
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Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.