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Humanism Inspires A Lot Of Enthusiasm For Everyday Life And Urges People To Be Better To One Another, To Work Towards A Better Future And A Common Good. If I Believed There Was An Afterlife I Would Have So Much Less Motive For Filling This Life With Every Experience That Is Offered Up To Me.

-Stephen Fry

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Humanism Inspires A Lot

Stephen Fry

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Humanism Inspires A Lot Of Enthusiasm For Everyday Life And Urges People To Be Better To One Another, To Work Towards A Better Future And A Common Good. If I Believed There Was An Afterlife I Would Have So Much Less Motive For Filling This Life With Every Experience That Is Offered Up To Me.

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Not One Word Of The Following Is True

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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.

It May Be That There Is An Afterlife And I'll Look Incredibly Stupid, But At Least I Will Have Had A Crammed Pre Afterlife, A Crammed Life, So To Me The Most Important Thing Is You Know As Kipling Put It. [...] To Fill Every Unforgiving Minute With 60 Seconds Worth Of Distance Run.

It Is Exhausting Knowing That Most Of The Time The Phone Rings, Most Of The Time There's An Email, Most Of The Time There's A Letter, Someone Wants Something Of You.

I Think People Talk About One Love, But There Is The Need To Love And The Need To Be Loved Are Not The Same Thing And I Suppose That's... And It's Working That Out Is Part Of Growing Up.

Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself And You Will Be Happy.

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.

My Parents Were Marvelously Educated People.

I Like To Wake Up Each Morning And Not Know What I Think, That I May Reinvent Myself In Some Way.

Great Writers, I Discovered, Were Not To Be Bowed Down Before And Worshipped, But Embraced And Befriended. Their Names Resounded Through History Not Because They Had Massive Brows And Thought Deep Incomprehensible Thoughts, But Because They Opened Windows In The Mind, They Put Their Arms Round You And Showed You Things You Always Knew But Never Dared To Believe. Even If Their Names Were Terrifyingly Foreign And Intellectual Sounding, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire Or Cavafy, They Turned Out To Be Charming And Wonderful And Quite Unalarming After All.

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You Can't Reason Yourself Back Into Cheerfulness Any More Than You Can Reason Yourself Into An Extra Six Inches In Height.

I Was At A Dinner Party Many Years Ago,sitting Along From Tom Stoppard, Who In Those Days Smoked Not Just Between Courses,but Between Mouthfuls. An American Woman Watched In Disbelief. "and You So Intelligent!" "excuse Me?" Said Tom "knowing Those Things Are Going To Kill You" She Said "and Still You Do It." "how Differently I Might Behave" Tom Said, "if Immortality Were An Option

I Do Like Being Surprised By Directors And Producers And Being Offered Parts I Would Never Have Considered, Including Parts That Aren't Necessarily Obvious But Which Would Test Me.

It Is Possible To Be A Fan Of Reality Tv, Talent Shows And Bubblegum Pop And Still Have A Brain. You Will Also See That A Great Many People Know Perfectly Well How Silly And Camp And Trivial Their Fandom Is. They Do Not Check In Their Minds When They Enter A Fan Site. Judgement Is Not Necessarily Fled To Brutish Beasts, And Men Have Not Quite Lost Their Reason. Which Is All A Way Of Questioning Whether Pop-culture Hero Worship Is Really So Psychically Damaging, So Erosive Of Cognitive Faculties, So Corrupting Of The Soul Of Mankind As We Are So Often Told.

You've Just Had The Most Imponderable Joy Of Watching Charlieissocoollike, Which Makes You, Like, Cool.

One Of The Reasons I Love The Online World Is That Although That Exists In Abundance You Can Choose Absolutely Which Part Of The Online World You Want To Live In. You Can Make Your Own Kingdom In That Sense.

Taste Every Fruit Of Every Tree In The Garden At Least Once. It Is An Insult To Creation Not To Experience It Fully. Temperance Is Wickedness.

And Of Course You Are Mad, If By A Madman We Mean A Mind That Questions And Rejects Every Civilized Norm.

Part Of Life Is Learning What To Be Ashamed Of And What To Be Proud Of.

The Email Of The Species Is Deadlier Than The Mail.

I've Never Had Any Illusions About Being A Lead Actor In Films, Because Lead Actors Have To Be Of A Certain Kind.

Atheism Is Not Just About Not Believing There Is A God, But On The Assumption That There Is One, What Kind Of God Is He?

It's Now Very Common To Hear People Say 'i'm Rather Offended By That'.

Freedom Of Speech

Enthusiats Are Used To Being Mocked, Maligned And Misunderstood. We Don't Really Mind.

When You've Seen A Nude Infant Doing A Backward Somersault You Know Why Clothing Exists.

I Found It All About As Arousing As A Tupperware Party.

All The Big Words -virtue, Justice, Truth, ...- Are Dwarfed By The Greatness Of Kindness

You Think Homosexuality Is Disgusting? Then, It Follows As The Night The Day, That You Find Sex Disgusting, For There Is Nothing Done Between Two Men Or Two Women That Is, By Any Objective Standard, Different From That Which Is Done Between A Man And A Woman.

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.

[...] 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.

If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People In The World?

What Other Developed Democracy Has Such A Ridiculous And Squalid History Of Intolerance? From The Imprisonment And Roasting Of Heretics, Witches And Poachers, To The Censorship Of Literature, Art And Television: From St Alban Through Wilde, Joyce And Lawrence I Think We Can Point With Pride To As Grim A Catalogue Of Intemperate, Bigoted Repression As Any Nation On Earth.

Sex Without Smiling Is As Sickly And As Base As Vodka And Tonic Without Ice.

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.

I've Always Been Aware Of My Sexuality, But I Never Quite Knew What It Meant.

You Don't Need A Harvard Mba To Know That The Bedroom And The Boardroom Are Just Two Sides Of The Same Ballgame.

This Is The Point. One Technology Doesn't Replace Another, It Complements. Books Are No More Threatened By Kindle Than Stairs By Elevators.

You Think I Have More Than Most People Dream Of? What Other People Dream Of Doesn't Matter. I Always Had Less Than I Ever Dreamt Of. All I Ever Dreamt Of Was Family. A Father And A Mother. Most People Don't Even Need To Dream Of Such Luxuries, They Take Them For Granted. That Is What I Used To Dwell On, Alone In My Bedroom. I Dwelt As All Children Do, On The Injustice. Injustice Is The Most Terrible Thing In The World, Oliver. Everything That Is Evil Springs From It And Only A Cheap Soul Can Abide It Without Anger.

I Have Van Gogh's Ear For Music

I Suppose The Thing That Really Interests Me Is What Mankind Did With The Big, Big, Big Discoveries That Have Created Our Modern Age.

Nudity Is A Deep Worry If You Have A Body Like A Bin Bag Full Of Yoghurt, Which I Have.

People Who Can Change And Change Again Are So Much More Reliable And Happier Than Those Who Can’t

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.

Money And Fame Are Trashy And Don't Guarantee Happiness, But We All Refuse Really To Know It.

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.

The Only People Who Are Obsessed With Food Are Anorexics And The Morbidly Obese. That, In Erotic Terms, Is The Catholic Church, In A Nutshell.

They Are Just 100 Per Cent Bear, Whereas Human Beings Feel We're Not 100 Per Cent Human, That We're Always Letting Ourselves Down. We're Constantly Striving Towards Something, To Some Fulfilment.

I Believe In Kindness And Niceness And Lots Of Spiritual Things, But The Real Intellectual Rigor And Quest Of Logic Is Something That I'm Afraid Takes Incredibly Hard Work And We Live In An Age In Which Hard Work Is If Not Actively Deprecated Or Denigrated It Is Run Away From Or Ignored.

It Is Easy To Forget That The Most Important Aspect Of Comedy, After All, Its Great Saving Grace, Is Its Ambiguity. You Can Simultaneously Laugh At A Situation, And Take It Seriously.

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.

If You Go Looking For Loonies And Religious Fanatics And Dropouts And Freaks, I Dare Say You'll Find It.

A University Is Not, Thank Heavens, A Place For Vocational Instruction, It Has Nothing To Do With Training For A Working Life And Career, It Is A Place For Education, Something Quite Different.

There Is No Right Language Or Wrong Language Any More Than There Are Right Or Wrong Clothes.

I've Never Had Any Illusions About Being A Lead Actor In Films, Because Lead Actors Have To Be Of A Certain Kind. Apart From The Beauty Of Looks And Figure, Which I Cannot Claim To Have, There's Just A Particular Kind Of Ordinary-joe Quality That A Film Star Needs To Have.

One Of The Most Intensely Unlikeable Figures Of The Twentieth Century, Fanatical Anti-semite, Enemy Of Labour Unions And Proud Recipient Of Medals From Nazi Germany, Where Hitler Held Him In Veneration, Henry Ford Was Also An Employer Who Paid His Workers More Than His Competitors, An Innovator Who Pioneered The Assembly Line And A Visionary Whose Part In The Creation Of The Twentieth Century Was So Great That Aldous Huxley, In His Brave New World, Prefigured A Society Whose Calendar Was Divided Into Bf And Af-before Ford And After Ford.

Brave New World

This New England We Have Invented For Ourselves Is Not Interested At All In Education. It Is Only Interested In Training, Both Material And Spiritual. Education Means Freedom, It Means Ideas, It Means Truth. Training Is What You Do To A Pear Tree When You Pleach It And Prune It To Grow Against A Wall. Training Is What You Give An Airline Pilot Or A Computer Operator Or A Barrister Or A Radio Producer. Education Is What You Give Children To Enable Them To Be Free From The Prejudices And Moral Bankruptcies Of Their Elders.

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.

And Then I Saw Him And Nothing Was Ever The Same Again. The Sky Was Never The Same Colour, The Moon Never The Same Shape: The Air Never Smelt The Same, Food Never Tasted The Same. Every Word I Knew Changed Its Meaning, Everything That Once Was Stable And Firm Became As Insubstantial As A Puff Of Wind, And Every Puff Of Wind Became A Solid Thing I Could Feel And Touch.

Seriousness Is No More A Guarantee Of Truth, Insight, Authenticity Or Probity, Than Humour Is A Guarantee Of Superficiality And Stupidity.

It's A Great Privilege Just To Be In A Film Not Because You're Some Packaging That Some Agent Has Done With The Studio Exec: "we Need A John Travolta Film."

No, I Love The Idea That Someone Changes. As An Actor It's Always The Thing That You Look For. He Is Someone Who Starts Off Bright, Cheerful And Confident And Then Has Everything Taken Away From Him. It's A Wonderful Journey To Take.

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.

Supporting The English Cricket Team Is Like Supporting A Second Division Football Team. I Support Norwich City Football Team And When They Lose I Really Don't Mind Because I Expect Them To; But When We Win I'm So Happy - Much Happier Than Any Arsenal Supporter Could Ever Be.

In A Dung Heap, Even A Plastic Bead Can Gleam Like A Sapphire.

Self-consciousness, That's What It Is. Always My Abiding Vice. I Keep Seeing Myself. Me Watching Myself Watching Others Watch Me. How Do You Lose That? What's The Trick?

As Children Everyone Thinks Their Family Is Weird And They're Upset By The Weirdness Of Their Own Family.

Perhaps The Greatest Definition I Think Of Character And Quality Is People Who When They're Truly Great Rather Than Making You Feel That Tall They Make You Feel That Tall, That They're Greatness As It Were Improves You.

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.

Estate Agents. You Can't Live With Them, You Can't Live With Them. The First Sign Of These Nasty Purulent Sores Appeared Round About 1894. With Their Jangling Keys, Nasty Suits, Revolting Beards, Moustaches And Tinted Spectacles, Estate Agents Roam The Land Causing Perturbation And Despair. If You Try And Kill Them, You're Put In Prison: If You Try And Talk To Them, You Vomit. There's Only One Thing Worse Than An Estate Agent But At Least That Can Be Safely Lanced, Drained And Surgically Dressed. Estate Agents. Love Them Or Loathe Them, You'd Be Mad Not To Loathe Them.

It Is A Little Theory Of Mine That Has Much Exercised My Mind Lately, That Most Of The Problems Of This Silly And Delightful World Derive From Our Apologising For Those Things Which We Ought Not To Apologise For, And Failing To Apologise For Those Things For Which Apology Is Necessary.

The Greeks Understood Perfectly That If There Were Divine Beings They Are Capricious, Unkind, Malicious Mostly, Temperamental, Envious And Mostly Deeply Unpleasant Because That You Can Say Well Yes, All Right, If There Is Going To Be God Or Gods Then You Have To Admit That They're Very At The Very Least Capricious. They're Certainly Not Consistent. They're Certainly Not All Loving.

The Part Of [oscar] Wilde Was Exceptionally Important To Me; The Man, His Achievements, His Wisdom, But His Downfall, His Disgrace And The Tragic And Bitter End To It Have Always Fascinated, Appalled And Attracted Me Since Childhood. It Was He Who First In Some Measure Vindicated My Sexuality.

You Can't Just Say There Is A God Because The World Is Beautiful. You Have To Account For Bone Cancer In Children

[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!'

I've Always Believed That Everything That Is Said From Authority Is Either The Authority Of One's Own Heart, One's Own Brain, One's Own Reading, One's Own Trust, But Not The Authority Of Someone Who Claims It Because They're Speaking For God And They Know The Truth Because It's Written In A Book. That, Essentially, Is Where I Come From. In A Sense, Tolerance Is My Religion. Reason Is My Religion.

Compromise Is A Stalling Between Two Fools.

Sometimes There Just Isn't Enough Vomit In The World.

Glory Never Arrives Through The Front Door. She Sneaks In Uninvited Round The Back Or Through An Upstairs Window While You Are Sleeping.

If You Know Someone Who’s Depressed, Please Resolve Never To Ask Them Why. Depression Isn’t A Straightforward Response To A Bad Situation; Depression Just Is, Like The Weather. Try To Understand The Blackness, Lethargy, Hopelessness, And Loneliness They’re Going Through. Be There For Them When They Come Through The Other Side. It’s Hard To Be A Friend To Someone Who’s Depressed, But It Is One Of The Kindest, Noblest, And Best Things You Will Ever Do.

Just As It Is The Love Of Money That Is The Root Of All Evil, It Is The Belief In Shamefulness That Is The Root Of All Misery.

One Of The Most Unattractive Human Traits, And So Easy To Fall Into, Is Resentment At The Sudden Shared Popularity Of A Previously Private Pleasure. Which Of Us Hasn't Been Annoyed When A Band, Writer, Artist Or Television Series That Had Been A Minority Interest Of Ours Has Suddenly Achieved Mainstream Popularity? When It Was At A Cult Level We Moaned At The Philistinism Of A World That Didn't Appreciate It, And Now That They Do Appreciate It We're All Resentful And Dog-in-the-manger About It.

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.

I Never Quite Dare To Believe I'm Brave Enough To Be An Artist, But I'm On The Side Of Artists. I Think Of Myself As A Bit Of A Salieri, Looking With Longing Eyes At Mozart.

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.

It's Certainly Easy To Mock Some Things ... Oddly Enough Though I've Never Found It Easy To Mock Anything Of Value. Only Things That Are Tawdry And Fatuous - Perhaps It's Just Me.

The Alarm In The Morning? Well, I Have An Old Tape Of Carlo Maria Giulini Conducting The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra In A Perfectly Transcendent Version In Shubert's Seventh Symphony. And I've Rigged It Up So That At Exactly 7:30 Every Morning It Falls From The Ceiling Onto My Face.

Many People Would No More Think Of Entering Journalism Than The Sewage Business - Which At Least Does Us All Some Good.

Philosophy Is An Odd Thing. When We Use The Word In Everyday Speech, You Know, You Sometimes Hear It Hilariously.

Mind You, Mount Rushmore Isn't Exactly The Parthenon Or The Sistine Chapel Either. After The Naïve Daftness Of The Crazy Horse Monument, I Find The Pompous Idiocy Of Those Four Presidents Somehow More Risible Still. Wishing To Show Respect Or Feel A Vicarious Thrill Of Admiration And Pride, I Can Only Giggle. For Which I Am Very Sorry. Any Loyal American Reading This Who Feels Outraged And Insulted Is Free To Explode With Derisive Snorts Of Laughter At Any British Equivalent.

Come Back, And Do That Thing, Be Lovely To Each-other.

The Most Important Philosophy I Think Is That Even If It Isn't True You Must Absolutely Assume There Is No Afterlife.

But If One Could Go Back In Time, I'd Love To Have Been Directed By Howard Hawks, Who's One Of My Great Heroes. One Of The Greatest Directors There Ever Was. He Directed Probably One Of The Greatest Westerns Of All Time In 'rio Bravo'.

To Me, Reason Is As Spiritual As Anything Else, The Beauty Of Reason Seems To Me Indelible And Ineffable And Numinous... The Spirit Is After All The Same Word We Use To Describe... Essence

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