“Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.”
Variant: Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.
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Paperweight
Stephen Fry
The Hippopotamus
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry:
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Famous Stephen Fry Quotes
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Stephen Fry Quotes about people
“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t”
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
On the expenses scandal in the UK.
On Newsnight on the BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8045869.stm
2000s
(To the affirmative team) Then what are you for?!
Answering a question during the Intelligence² debate: "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009
2000s
From Radio 4's Bookclub http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8l3b
2000s
Fry on the reason for the popularity of alternative medicine. "Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s
Stephen Fry Quotes about life
Referencing Oscar Wilde from the preface of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; "All art is quite useless".
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Context: … but love, like all art, as Oscar said, it's quite useless. It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe but not worth bothering with.
Source: Making History
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
On his suicide attempt at age 17
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Stephen Fry: Trending quotes
On being gay
Stephen Fry actually admitted this was a quote from a friend, not himself. (Moab Is My Washpot)
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Stephen Fry Quotes
“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.”
Stephen Fry
book
The Liar
The Liar (1991)
1990s
Room 101 (2001) Season 6 Episode 10
2000s
Context: The key word for me (my spleen isn't really big enough to explode with all the splenetic juices of fury that drive me when I consider this), but the real key word that triggers my rage is the word 'energy', when people start talking about it in terms of negative or positive types. For instance, "there's very negative energy in here." What are you talking about? What do you mean? I mean, let's think about it. What does energy mean? Well, we know what it means: energy from petrol when it's burned, it moves the car. "This room has positive energy" — well, where the fuck's it going then? It's not moving. It's covering up such woolly thinking, such pathetic nonsense. And astrology: most people will say of astrology, "Well, it's harmless fun." And I should say that for 80% of the cases it probably is harmless fun, but there's a strong way in which it isn't harmless. One, because it is so anti-science. You will hear things like, "Science doesn't know everything." Well, of course science doesn't know everything. But because science doesn't know everything, that doesn't mean science knows nothing. Science knows enough for us to be watched by a few million people now on television, for these lights to be working, for quite extraordinary miracles to have taken place in terms of the harnessing of the physical world and our dim approaches towards understanding it. And as Wittgenstein quite rightly said, "When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart."
"Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s
Context: The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power. I am a great believer in double-blind random testing, which is the basis of all drug testing. People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true—it’s as simple as that. If you’re dying of cancer or very, very ill, then you’ll cling to a straw. I feel pretty dark thoughts about the kind of people who throw straws at drowning, dying men and women, and I’m sure most of us would agree it’s a pretty lousy thing to do. Some of these people perhaps believe in the snake oil they sell or allow themselves to believe in it. That’s why James Randi is so good, because he knows what magicians know: if you do a card trick on someone, they will report that it was unbelievable, they describe the effect the magician wanted, and they miss out all the steps in between that seemed irrelevant because the magician made them irrelevant, so they didn’t notice them. People will swear that a clairvoyant mentioned the name of their aunt from nowhere, and they will be astonished if you then play a recording that shows that thirty-two names were said before the aunt’s name, none of which had any effect on them. That’s because they wanted to hear their aunt’s name; they wanted the trick to work, so they forgot all the failures in the same way as people forget all their dreams that have no relevance to their lives, but they mark when they dream of someone they haven’t met for ages that they see the next day. I would be astounded if everyone had coincidences like that—yet people say that is somehow closed-minded of me!
"Last Chance to Think" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s
Context: The powers of the placebo are so strong that it may be morally wrong to call homeopathy a lie because the moment you say it then a placebo falls to pieces and loses its power. I am a great believer in double-blind random testing, which is the basis of all drug testing. People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true—it’s as simple as that. If you’re dying of cancer or very, very ill, then you’ll cling to a straw. I feel pretty dark thoughts about the kind of people who throw straws at drowning, dying men and women, and I’m sure most of us would agree it’s a pretty lousy thing to do. Some of these people perhaps believe in the snake oil they sell or allow themselves to believe in it. That’s why James Randi is so good, because he knows what magicians know: if you do a card trick on someone, they will report that it was unbelievable, they describe the effect the magician wanted, and they miss out all the steps in between that seemed irrelevant because the magician made them irrelevant, so they didn’t notice them. People will swear that a clairvoyant mentioned the name of their aunt from nowhere, and they will be astonished if you then play a recording that shows that thirty-two names were said before the aunt’s name, none of which had any effect on them. That’s because they wanted to hear their aunt’s name; they wanted the trick to work, so they forgot all the failures in the same way as people forget all their dreams that have no relevance to their lives, but they mark when they dream of someone they haven’t met for ages that they see the next day. I would be astounded if everyone had coincidences like that—yet people say that is somehow closed-minded of me!
“She has a very intense poetic mind. That's what makes it — that voice that comes in.”
While listening to 50 Words for Snow
2010s, The Kate Bush Story (2014)
The Blasphemy Debate with Christopher Hitchens
On the Guardian website
2000s
“My whole life stretched out gloriously behind me.”
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Context: When I had first caught sight of Matthew I saw the beauty in everything. Now I saw only ugliness and decay. All beauty was in the past. Again and again I wrote in poems, in notes, on scraps of paper. My whole life stretched out gloriously behind me. If I wrote that sick phrase once, I wrote it fifty times. And I believed it, too.
“Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.”
On the This Week programme on the BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_week/4996976.stm
2000s
Context: We expect a very high standard of living. We expect food to be cheap and available. We expect energy to be cheap and available. … And we pay this group of styleless sexless people whom we call politicians a small amount of money in order to lay off our own guilt. Our own cant and hypocrisy is laid at their door. And apparently, it's they who are the hypocrites. It is they who are corrupt. It is they who refuse to solve the problems of the world. Well, it isn't. It's us. It's me, and it's you.... Suppose you're prime minister, you've got all these illegal immigrants. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to hide the true facts? That's hardly something the public would accept, so you campaign and you say "we don't know how many there are - let's do something about it", and then you're accused of incompetence. Well, of course you don't know how many there are: they're illegal immigrants. Do we expect magic from our politicians? We're not going to get it. They're just human beings like you and me.... 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.
“There is nothing so self-righteous nor so right as an adolescent imagination.”
On adolescence
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Context: Didn't Woody Allen say that all literature was a footnote to Faust? Perhaps all adolescence is a dialogue between Faust and Christ. We tremble on the brink of selling that part of ourselves that is real, unique, angry, defiant and whole for the rewards of attainment, achievement, success and the golden prizes of integration and acceptance; but we also in our great creating imagination, rehearse the sacrifice we will make: the pain and terror we will take from others' shoulders; our penetration into the lives and souls of our fellows; our submission to willingness to be rejected and despised for the sake of truth and love and, in the wilderness, our angry rebuttals of the hypocrisy, deception and compromise of a world which we see to be so false. There is nothing so self-righteous nor so right as an adolescent imagination.
Stephen Fry, talking about his work with Kate on 50 Words for Snow, and the credits on the album.
2010s, The Kate Bush Story (2014)
Context: I was called by my agent, who said "Would you like to record a track with Kate Bush?" To which there is only F-ing one possible answer. Unless its me singing. I said, "She does know I can't sing?" "No-no-no, it would be voicing, saying words for snow. … I still can't believe it says "Kate Bush-Stephen Fry."
"Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
1990s
Context: I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
“It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.”
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Variant: It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.
Source: The Fry Chronicles
Source: The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
“Enthusiats are used to being mocked, maligned and misunderstood. We don't really mind.”
Source: The Fry Chronicles
“Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.”
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.”
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
“Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books”
Source: The Fry Chronicles
“Those who rule the world get so little opportunity to run about and laugh and play in it.”
Source: The Fry Chronicles
Room 101 (2001)
2000s
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
“He takes coke and has slept with a prostitute - but he's a TV presenter for God's sake!”
On the sacking of Angus Deayton from Have I Got News For You.
Quoted in The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/stephen-fry-a-restless-soul-546925.html
2000s
On Jan Moir's column on the death of Stephen Gately.
Quoted in The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/16/jan-moir-column-on-stephe_n_323964.html
2000s
“Greasy, miserable, British and pathetic”
On the sacking of Angus Deayton from Have I Got News For You
On the BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/2953181.stm
2000s
