Stephen Fry is an English actor, comedian, author, journalist, broadcaster and film director. He is also a celebrated national treasure, cultural icon and British institution. This is a small collection of quotations attributed to him.
“My mother, yes, she believed in me, but everybody’s mother believes in them. No one else believed in me.”
“…but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”
“I believed in ghosts more than I believed in me, and take my word for it, I never believed in ghosts…”
“I’m far too spiritual and emotional and passionate to believe in the supernatural.”
“Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.”
“There’s no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.”
“You can’t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.”
“Generally, we admire the thing we are not.”
“You are who you are when nobody’s watching.”
“Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
“When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.”
“We’ve all met people who are supposedly incredibly intelligent but don’t know which way to sit on a lavatory.”
“Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.”
“Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business – which at least does us all some good.”
“How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?”
“If you go looking for loonies and religious fanatics and dropouts and freaks, I dare say you’ll find it.”
“An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.”
“There is so much we can learn from TV. It’s a window on the world.”
“I’ve always had great respect for Paddington because he is amusingly English and eccentric.”
“Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word’s full octave.”
“Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully.”
“I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”
“I don’t need you to remind me of my age. I have a bladder to do that for me.”
“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious.”
“Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”
“One technology doesn’t replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
“…we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both.”
“I don’t watch television; I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.”
“…books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they’re kind of slightly dark and dangerous.”
“I think I have always linked smoking and sex. Maybe this is where I have been going wrong all my life.”
“It’s so easy to say, ‘That’ll do.’ Everyone’s in a hurry. People are intellectually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy…”
“We abrogate the responsibility for thought & moral decisions onto others & then have the luxury of saying it’s not good enough”
“It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.”
“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.”
“The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity.”
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