Stephen Fry citations (94 citations, Page 3)

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Stephen Fry Citations

“Dieu n’est pas l’Auteur de l’Univers, c’est le scénariste de votre biopic.”

Stephen Fry livre Making History

Making History

Stephen Fry: Citations en anglais

“I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing between switching out the bedside lamp and the sudden indignity of rebirth: the slaps, the brightness, the tubing, the speed, the urgent insistence that I be choked back into breathing life. I have felt so sorry for babies ever since.”

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Stephen Fry

On his suicide attempt at age 17
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“[On libraries] What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. They don't have to steal it from a bookshop… You know when you're young, you're growing up, they're almost sexually exciting places because books are powerhouses of knowledge, and therefore they're kind of slightly dark and dangerous. You see books that kind of make you go 'Oh!”

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Stephen Fry

Room 101 (2001)
2000s

“Weak watery sun, but sun nonetheless. Why does it take me nearly 2 hours just to get through the morning emails? Pah, poo and pants.”

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Stephen Fry

2000s

“I know that my early life was at one and the same time so common as to be unremarkable, and so strange as to be the stuff of fiction. I know of course that this is how all human lives are, but that it is only given to a few of us to luxuriate in the bath of self-revelation, self-curiosity, apology, revenge, bafflement, vanity and egoism that goes under the name Autobiography. You have seen me at my washpot scrubbing at the grime of years: to wallow in a washpot may not be the same thing as to be purified and cleansed, but I have come away from this very draining, highly bewildering and passionately intense few months feeling slightly less dirty. Less dirty about the first twenty years of my life, at least. The second twenty, now that is another story.”

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Stephen Fry

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!”

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Stephen Fry

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

“I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.”

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Stephen Fry

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”

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Stephen Fry

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

“I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God or faith in crystals. I very rarely have faith in God; I occasionally have little spasms of it, but they go away, if I think hard enough about it. I am incandescent with rage at the idea of horoscopes and of crystals and of the nonsense of 'New Age', or indeed even more pseudo-scientific things: self-help, and the whole culture of 'searching for answers', when for me, as someone brought up in the unashamed Western tradition of music and poetry and philosophy, all the answers are there in the work that has been done by humanity before us, in literature, in art, in science, in all the marvels that have created this moment now, instead of people looking away. The image to me... is gold does exist, and for 'gold' say 'truth', say 'the answer', say 'love', say 'justice', say anything: it does exist. But the only way in this world you can achieve gold is to be incredibly intelligent about geology, to learn what mankind has learnt, to learn where it might lie, and then break your fingers and blister your skin in digging for it, and then sweat and sweat in a forge, and smelt it. And you will have gold, but you will never have it by closing your eyes and wishing for it. No angel will lean out of the bar of heaven and drop down sheets of gold for you. And we live in a society in which people believe they will. But the real answer, that there is gold, and that all you have to do is try and understand the world enough to get down into the muck of it, and you will have it, you will have truth, you will have justice, you will have understanding, but not by wishing for it.”

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Stephen Fry

From Radio 4's Bookclub http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8l3b
2000s

“There’s nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.”

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Stephen Fry

On the expenses scandal in the UK.
Quoted in Pink News http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-12560.html
This is a variation on a line from Lord Macaulay's 'On Moore's Life of Lord Byron' (1830): 'We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.'
2000s

“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”

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Stephen Fry

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses.”

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Stephen Fry

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears.”

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Stephen Fry

"Trefusis on Any Questions" in Paperweight (1993) p. 61.
Originally broadcast on Loose Ends, BBC Radio 4, circa 1987.
1990s

“You cannot work too hard at poetry. People are bad at it not because they have tin ears, but because they simply don't have the faintest idea how much work goes into it. It's not as if you're ordering a pizza or doing something that requires direct communication in a very banal way. But it seems these days the only people who spend time over things are retired people and prisoners. We bolt things, untasted. It's so easy to say, 'That'll do.' Everyone's in a hurry. People are intellectually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy… All the time. When people get angry with a traffic warden they don't stop and think what it would be like to be a traffic warden or how annoying it would be if people could park wherever they liked. People talk lazily about how hypocritical politicians are. But everyone is. On the one hand we hate that petrol is expensive and on the other we go on about global warming. We abrogate the responsibility for thought and moral decisions onto others and then have the luxury of saying it's not good enough.”

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Stephen Fry

Interview with The Daily Telegraph promoting his book The Ode Less Travelled. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3647424/The-would-be-don.html
2000s

“Pathetic, naive, like small noisy tantrums.”

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Stephen Fry

On the e-book Poets Against the War.
Interview with The Daily Telegraph promoting his book The Ode Less Travelled. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3647424/The-would-be-don.html
2000s

“Well, my interpretation is no more valid than anyone else’s, but I would say in terms of medicine, people want to take control of their own lives, and ironically they seem to think that they are taking control of their lives more by using so-called complementary or alternative medicines than by using orthodox medicine. In other words, they think it’s a statement of originality and individuality. To you and me it seems self-evidently ridiculous, this homeopathic medicine. It is so preposterous, and yet some people I know and respect insist on believing it.”

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Stephen Fry

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

“I have to mime at parties when everyone sings Happy Birthday... mime or mumble and rumble and growl and grunt so deep that only moles, manta rays and mushrooms can hear me.”

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Stephen Fry

on his frustrating inability to sing
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there.”

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Stephen Fry

2010s

“I don't need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me.”

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Stephen Fry

"Trefusis Returns!" in Paperweight (1993) p. 279.
Originally printed in The Daily Telegraph circa 1990.
1990s

“I should say today that it's tragic that people lose faith in what was once an honourable profession but people will lose faith in journalists. There's nothing one can do about it. People no longer trust journalists - we'll have to turn to politics instead for our belief in people. I almost mean that. Although, of course, anybody can talk about snouts in troughs and go on about it, for journalists to do so is almost beyond belief. Beyond belief. I know lots of journalists - I know more journalists than I know politicians - and I've never met a more venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances… Not all [of them] but then not all human beings are either. I've cheated expenses. I've fiddled things. You have, of course you have. Let's not confuse what politicians get really wrong - things like wars, things where people die - with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they've charged for their wisteria. It's not that important, it really isn't. It isn't what we're fighting for. It isn't what voting is for and the idea that 'Oh, we've all lost faith in politics' [is] nonsense. It's a journalistic made-up frenzy. I know you don't want me to say that. You want me to say "No, it matters, it's important." It isn't it. Believe me, it isn't. It's not the big deal; it's not what we should be worrying about. I know no one's going to pay any attention and newspapers will great joy over filling yards and yards of newsprint with tiny, pointless details of this politician's or that politician's squalid and sad little life as they see it. It's not the big picture, it really isn't. You know, we get the politicians we deserve, it's our fault as much as anybody else's. This has been going on for years and suddenly because a journalist discovers it it's the biggest story ever! It's absolute nonsense, it really is.”

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Stephen Fry

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

“The beauty of the brain is that you can still be as greedy as you like for knowledge and it doesn’t show.”

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Stephen Fry

Radio Times interview (2013)
1990s

“I actually got a Ugandan Minister to say, on camera— he's the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, it's the only such ministry in the world— and I said to him, "Look, even if these three utterly false supports on which you base your homophobia are true, which they aren't, there's so much more to worry about in your country than the odd gay person going to bed with the other gay person. For example, you have almost an epidemic of child rape in this country, which is just frightening."
And he said, "Ah, but it is the right kind of child rape."
I said, "That was on camera. Do you know that was on camera?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Can you just explain what you meant?"
"Well, it is men raping girls. Which is natural."”

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Stephen Fry

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,
Recounting an exchange with Ugandan Minister Simon Lokodo.
2010s

“Well I'm afraid it simply does, um, [the Catholic Church] does condemn [homosexuality], yes, it calls it a - the official word is disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a 'moral evil'. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made is that the church is very loose on moral evils because, although they try to accuse people like me who believe in the empiricism and the enlightenment of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it's some appalling sin where what it actually means is thought, um, they um, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine… absolutely okay, and then they didn't, and what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says 'oh well we couldn't know better because nobody else did?”

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Stephen Fry

(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

“I genuinely believe that the Catholic church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world… We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation that leads to the playground bullying when people say: “You’re a disordered, morally evil individual.””

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Stephen Fry

That’s not nice, it isn’t nice.
"The Catholic church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009, Abridged Intelligence² debate speech.
2000s

“Alternative medicine people call themselves "holistic" and say it's the "whole" approach. Well, if it's the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation.”

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Stephen Fry

Room 101, Season 6 Episode 10
2000s

“What decent person would want to spend a life picking and cavilling? Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"… you know'.”

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Stephen Fry livre Paperweight

On critics, from "Paperweight", 2006. <sup> http://wongablog.co.uk/2006/07/14/stephen-fry-on-critics/</sup>
2000s

“LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to every one of these essences of existence, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry 'Wow!”

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Stephen Fry

all the time, which is one of LSD's most distressing and least endearing side-effects.
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

“Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distils an idea.”

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Stephen Fry

On the subject of criteria he used to judge in The Most Beautiful Tweet contest, Hay Festival 2010[citation needed]
2010s

“Aquinas and Augustus of Hippo, both proposed this extraordinary idea that babies who were unbaptised would not know heaven. They also proposed the idea of purgatory which doesn’t exist in The Bible. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. However, what an extraordinary brilliant coup to imagine such a thing as purgatory. That a soul needs to be prayed for, in order to go to heaven. In order to turn left when he enters the aeroplane of heaven and get a first class seat. That, he needs to be prayed for. And many hundreds, indeed over a thousand years, you’ll be amazed what generous terms those prayers came at. Sometimes as little as two thirds of a year’s salary. Could ensure that a dead loved one would go to heaven. And money could ensure that your baby. Your dead child, your dead uncle, your dead mother, could go to heaven. And if you were rich enough, you could have a chantry built and monks would permanently sing prayers so that that existence in heaven for the child would go up and up and up until they were at the table of the Lord themselves.”

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Stephen Fry

2010s, Intelligence Squared, 2014

“Dacre is, all those who have had the misfortune to work for him assure me, just about as loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid, vengeful and disgusting a man as it possible to be.”

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Stephen Fry

The Daily Mail and Lord Dacre appeasing again http://stephen-fry-me.tumblr.com/post/57805910021/the-daily-mail-and-lord-dacre-appeasing-again, 2013 blog post.
2000s

“All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies…. God, if there’s a word that drives me mad it’s “energy” used in a nonsensical way—don’t get me started!”

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Stephen Fry

" Last Chance to Think http://www.csicop.org/si/show/stephen_fry--last_chance_to_think/" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s