Stephen Fry Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• P. G. Wodehouse... used, when in town, to solve the problem of the long walk to the post-office by the simple expedient of tossing his letters out of his window: his belief that the average human, finding a stamped and addressed envelope on the pavement, would naturally pop it into the nearest pillar-box was never once, in decades, shown to be unfounded.

  Stephen Fry

  Simple, Long Walks, Average

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• [...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.

  Stephen Fry

  World, Firsts, Aliens

  Stephen Fry (2011). “Moab Is My Washpot”, p.52, Soho Press

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• The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies.

  Stephen Fry

  Vocabulary, People, Swear

  "Stephen Fry: Guilty", 2007.

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• Humanism is an approach to life which encourages ethical and fulfilling living on the basis of reason and humanity, and rejects superstition and religion. The most immediate impact of living as a Humanist is that we believe this life is all there is - so what we do and the choices we make really count.

  Stephen Fry

  Believe, Impact, Choices

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• It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading a high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be - given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise.

  Stephen Fry

  Ideas, People, Facts

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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.

  Stephen Fry

  Weather, Annoyed, Pissed Off

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

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• As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.

  Stephen Fry

  Regret, Government, Victory

  BBC "This Week", May 19, 2006.

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• Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

  Stephen Fry

  Stupidity, Guarantees, Authenticity

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• Weather is real. It is absolutely real: when it rains, it rains – you get wet, there is no question about it. It is also true about weather that you can’t control it; you can’t say if I wish hard enough it won’t rain. It is equally true that if the weather is bad one day it will get better and what I had to learn was to treat my moods like the weather.

  Stephen Fry

  Real, Rain, Weather

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• I shall sustain a massive erection, that’s what, and I shan’t be answerable for the consequences. Some kind of ejaculation is almost bound to ensue and if either of you were to become pregnant I should never forgive myself.

  Stephen Fry

  Ejaculation, Forgiving, Kind

  Stephen Fry (2003). “The Liar”, p.16, Soho Press

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• We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.

  Stephen Fry

  Hero, Air, Valhalla

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• We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it.

  Stephen Fry

  Artist, Hands, Talking

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• I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable.

  Stephen Fry

  Passion, Thinking, Reasonable

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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."

  Stephen Fry

  Sex, Animal, Ignorant

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• It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.

  Stephen Fry

  People, Freedom Of Speech, Comedian

  "I saw hate in a graveyard - Stephen Fry" by David Smith, www.theguardian.com. June 5, 2005.

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• Philosophy is an odd thing... There is no particular Socratic or Dimechian or Kantian way to live your life. They don't offer ethical codes and standards by which to live your life.

  Stephen Fry

  Philosophy, Live Your Life, Odd Things

  "Big Think Interview With Stephen Fry". bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

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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.

  Stephen Fry

  Responsibility, Destiny, Order

  "The Importance of Unbelief". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

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• At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behavior but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behavior - and that's the human being.

  Stephen Fry

  Gay, Animal, Behavior

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• As if a device can function if it has no style. As if a device can be called stylish that does not function superbly... yes, beauty matters. Boy, does it matter. It is not surface, it is not an extra, it is the thing itself.

  Stephen Fry

  Boys, Style, Does It Matter

  "Welcome to dork talk" by Stephen Fry, www.theguardian.com. October 27, 2007.

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• You either get Norfolk, with its wild roughness and uncultivated oddities, or you don't. It's not all soft and lovely. It doesn't ask to be loved.

  Stephen Fry

  Oddities, Lovely, Norfolk

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• When push-off comes to shove-off, a man must have a reason to get out of bed in the mornings, something more than the threat of bedsores, at any rate.

  Stephen Fry

  Morning, Men, Bed

  Stephen Fry (1994). “The hippopotamus”, Random House (UK)

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• There's nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.

  Stephen Fry

  Morality, Fit, British

  "Stephen Fry: Public anger over MPs’ expenses is ‘revolting’" by Jessica Geen, www.pinknews.co.uk. May 22, 2009.

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• To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

  Stephen Fry

  Mean, Opposites, Adults

  Stephen Fry's BAFTA annual television lecture, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2010.

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• Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.

  Stephen Fry

  Art, School, Winning

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• I said it before and I’ll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there’s only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I’d be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don’t write movies. You make movies.

  Stephen Fry

  Art, Book, Writing

  Stephen Fry (2014). “Making History”, p.95, Soho Press

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