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I Will Defend The Absolute Value Of Mozart Over Miley Cyrus, Of Course I Will, But We Should Be Wary Of False Dichotomies. You Do Not Have To Choose Between One Or The Other. You Can Have Both. The Human Cultural Jungle Should Be As Varied And Plural As The Amazonian Rainforest. We Are All Richer For Biodiversity. We May Decide That A Puma Is Worth More To Us Than A Caterpillar, But Surely We Can Agree That The Habitat Is All The Better For Being Able To Sustain Each.

-Stephen Fry

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I Will Defend The

Stephen Fry

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I Will Defend The Absolute Value Of Mozart Over Miley Cyrus, Of Course I Will, But We Should Be Wary Of False Dichotomies. You Do Not Have To Choose Between One Or The Other. You Can Have Both. The Human Cultural Jungle Should Be As Varied And Plural As The Amazonian Rainforest. We Are All Richer For Biodiversity. We May Decide That A Puma Is Worth More To Us Than A Caterpillar, But Surely We Can Agree That The Habitat Is All The Better For Being Able To Sustain Each.

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Lectures Broke Into One's Day And Were Clearly A Terrible Waste Of Time, Necessary No Doubt If You Were Reading Law Or Medicine Or Some Other Vocational Subject, But In The Case Of English, The Natural Thing To Do Was Talk A Lot, Listen To Music, Drink Coffee And Wine, Read Books, And Go To Plays, Perhaps Be In Plays.

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I Like People Who Are As Unlike Me As Possible, Which Is Not An Expression Of Self Disgust Or Self Hatred, But It's Just That You Know You Obviously Particularly Admire Things That You Recognize Yourself As Not Having.

Money No Longer Has Any Meaning. Civilization Is Coming To An End. If Not The Destruction Of The World, It's An Endless Stalemate.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

I Was Born Mary Patterson, But Then I Married And Naturally Took My Husband's Name, So Now I'm Neil Patterson.

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

Life, That Can Shower You With So Much Splendour, Is Unremittingly Cruel To Those Who Have Given Up.

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.

Cheat? Good Heavens, This Is An Amateur Cricket Match Amongst Leading Prep Schools, I'm An Englishman And A Schoolmaster Supposedly Setting An Example To His Young Charges. We Are Playing The Most Artistic And Beautiful Game Ever Devised. Of Course I'll Cunting Well Cheat. Now, Give Me My Robe And Put On My Crown. I Have Immortal Longings In Me.

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?

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Compromise Is A Stalling Between Two Fools.

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Having Been An Actor And A Writer For So Long - 20 Years Or So - I Felt That It Would Be Daft To Go To One's Grave Without Having Directed. It's A Natural Extension Of Writing And Acting, And So I Knew It Would Happen One Day.

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.

I'm Absolute Attacking My Own Instinct For Politeness, But I Think I Admire Artists Who Just Speak Out Or Who Are Strong, So It's Very Hard.

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.

Mankind Can Live Free In A Society Hemmed In By Laws, But We Have Yet To Find A Historical Example Of Mankind Living Free In Lawless Anarchy.

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

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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.

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.

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'.

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

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.

If You Think You're Going To Have An Eternity In Which You Can Talk To Mozart And Chopin And Schopenhauer On A Cloud And Learn Stuff And You Know Really Get To Grips With Knowledge And Understanding And So You Won't Bother Now, I Think It's A Terrible, A Terrible Mistake.

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I'm Afraid I Was Very Much The Traditionalist. I Went Down On One Knee And Dictated A Proposal Which My Secretary Faxed Over Straight Away.

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Knowing What I Now Know I Would Never Have Done Anything So Fatuous; But Then I Never Would Have Known What I Know Now Had I Not.

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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!

I Don't Watch Television, I Think It Destroys The Art Of Talking About Oneself.

I Am Magnificently Prepared For The Long Littleness Of Life. There Is Diddley-squat For Me To Look Forward To. Zilch, Zero, Zip-all, Sweet Lipperty-pipperty Nothing. The Only Thought That Will Give Me The Energy To Carry On Is That Someone Has A Life Which Would Be Diminished By My Departure From It.

Everything Had Been Based On A Kind Of Certainty, A Sense Of Man At The Center Of Things, A Sense Of Order And Hierarchy. And Suddenly, Almost Simultaneously, Extraordinary Discoveries Are Made.

I'd Probably Want To Teach At University, Because Children Would Drive Me Insane. I Suspect It Would Be English Literature, Shakespeare And So Forth. I've Always Been Deeply, Deeply In Love With That Kind Of Thing.

The Performance Of Buggery Is No More Inevitable A Part Of Homosexuality Than An Orange Syllabub Is An Inevitable Part Of A Dinner: Some May Clamour For It And Instantly Demand A Second Helping, Some Are Not Interested, Some Decide They Will Try It Once And Then Instantly Vomit.

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

The Point About Manic Depression Or Bipolar Disorder, As It's Now More Commonly Called, Is That It's About Mood Swings. So, You Have An Elevated Mood. When People Think Of Manic Depression, They Only Hear The Word Depression. They Think One's A Depressive. The Point Is, One's A Manic-depressive.

You Should Give Up.' 'why?' 'for One Thing, You'll Live Longer.' 'oh, You Don't Live Longer. It Just Seems Longer.

There's Nothing Worse Than The British In One Of Their Fits Of Morality.

...the Reality Of Intelligent British Speech... Uses Blasphemus, Coital And Cloacal Expletives As A Matter Of Course.

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."

Most Of The Problem I See Amongst Friends And I've Experienced Amongst Myself Is When People Haven't Accommodated The Inequality That They Want, They Haven't Understood That Their Partner Wants To Give More Love And Receive Less Or They Haven't Understood That Their Partner Wants To Receive More, But Sort Of Give Less.

Nowadays A Lot Of What Was Wrong With Me Would No Doubt Be Ascribed To Attention Deficit Disorder, Tartrazine Food Colouring, Dairy Produce And Air Pollution. A Few Hundred Years Earlier It Would Have Been Demons, Still The Best Analogy I Think, But Not Much Help When It Comes To A Cure.

I Knew I Couldn't Believe In God, Because I Was Fundamentally Hellenic In My Outlook.

After The Shooting Of John Lennon And The Early Death Of So Many Great Stars And The Utter Naked Venal Mercantile Marketing Of Pop Music And Rock Music, I Don't Think Anyone Really Believes That Music Is Anything More Than Another Commodity.

I Have Always Been An Impassioned Advocate For The Works Of Shakespeare. I Regard Him As One Of The Most Complete Miracles Of His Or Any Other Age.

If You Have Been, I'm Glad You've Stopped.

My Life, At Least, Is Divided Between Writing And Performing And Mixtures Of The Two.

There Is No Reason Why Anyone Should Understand How It Works… And Of Course No Reason Why Anyone Should Care … Unless You Are Curious, In Which Case I Love You, For Curiosity About The World And All Its Corners Is A Beautiful Thing.

The Only Reason People Do Not Know Much Is Because They Do Not Care To Know. They Are Incurious. Incuriousity Is The Oddest And Most Foolish Failing There Is.

Places Of Incredible Glamour, Possibility, Power, Excitement And Pleasure. Love Your Libraries!

Moving From Chair To Chair, From Coffee Machine To Coffee Machine Is The Limit Of My Action In Most Films. But I Enjoy Being Cast In Them Because I Love Watching Them.

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

If There Were A God He Would Want Us To Be Better Spirited Than To Take His Word For Everything.

I Flicked My Eyes Over To Steve Again And Saw Him Straighten. He Would Need A Diversion Just To Start. “explanations?” I Bellowed. “explanations? There’s Your Explanation…there!” I Stabbed A Finger Dramatically Towards The Far Corner Of The Room. Pathetic, Really. I Mean, Talk About The Oldest Trick In The Book. But It’s A Good Book, And The Trick Would Have Been Cut From Subsequent Editions If It Didn’t Sometimes Work.

At John Schlesinger's Funeral At A Synagogue In St John's Wood Some Years Ago The Person I Stood Next To Said To Me Encouragingly, 'come On, Stephen - You're Not Singing. Have A Go!' 'believe Me, Paul, You Don't Want Me To,' I Said. Besides, I Was Having A Much Better Time Listening To Him. 'no. Go On!' So I Joined In The Chorus. 'you're Right,' Paul Mccartney Conceded. 'you Can't Sing.

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.

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.

It's As If Scientists Exert Every Effort Of Will They Possess Deliberately To Find The Least Significant Problems In The World And Explain Them. Art Matters. Happiness Matters. Love Matters. Good Matters. Evil Matters. Slam The Fridge Door. They Are The Only Things That Matter And They Are Of Course Precisely The Things That Science Goes Out Of Its Way To Ignore.

The Other Man's Arse Is Always Cleaner!

Hell, I Am Young. I Am Free. My Teeth Are Clean. The Sun Shines. To Hell With Everything Else

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.

A Book Is Judged, Not By Its Reference To Life, But By Its Reference To Other Books.

An Original Idea. That Can't Be Too Hard. The Library Must Be Full Of Them.

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

I'm A Bit Of A Coward, And Lazy, Oddly Enough.

The People I Know Who Swear The Most Tend To Have The Widest Vocabularies.

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

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.

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

When You Take A Lot Of Cocaine Powder You Tend To Take A Lot Of Alcohol With It As Well, So For Many Years Really I Never Went Out Without At Least Four Or Five Grams Of Cocaine Powder.

Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself And You Will Be Happy.

I Almost Once Wanted To Publish A Self Help Book Saying, 'how To Be Happy, By Stephen Fry: Guaranteed Success'. And People Buy This Huge Book And It's All Blank Pages, And The First Page Would Just Say, 'stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself--and You Will Be Happy.'

The Email Of The Species Is Deadlier Than The Mail.

I Think Eros Should Be Dirty. In Greek Legend, As I'm Sure You Are Aware, He Fell In Love With The Minor Deity Psyche. It Was The Greek Way Of Saying That, In Spite Of What It May Believe, Love Pursues The Soul, Not The Body; The Erotic Desires The Psychic. If Love Was Clean And Wholesome He Wouldn't Lust After Psyche.

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.

[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!'

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.

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.

I'm Fat Because I'm Greedy, And If My Mind Is Fat It's Because I'm Curious.

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.

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.

Skepsis. I Am A True Skeptic, Born Under The Noble Sign Of Skepsis, The Sign Of The Man Who Knows That All Astrology Is Absolutely And Without Reservation The Bullest Of Bullsh*t That Ever There Was. It Is A Senseless Delusion That Does Not Even Have The Benefit Of Being Harmless Fun. It Is A Harmful Bore. Harmful To The Human Spirit, Harmful To The Dignity And Wonder Of The Real Universe And The Real Power Of The Mind To Think For Itself. I Hate Astrology With A Fervor That Is Almost Frightening. - Stephen Fry (when Asked What Sign He Would Be If He Could Create His Own Zodiac)

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

There's No Doubt That I Do Have Extremes Of Mood That Are Greater Than Just About Anybody Else I Know.

A Film Star Is A Kind Of Public Monument, And Everyone's Staring At Them, And They've Kind Of Got Railings Around Them, And They're Rather Miserable Most Of The Time.

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.

I Really Do Believe That There Are Those Who Would Like And Trust Me Better If They Saw Me Weeping Into A Whisky, Making A Fool Of Myself, Getting Aggressive, Maudlin And Drunkenly Out Of Control. I Have Never Found Those States In Others Anything Other Than Tiring, Awkward, Embarrassing And Fantastically Dull, But I Am Quite Sure That People Would Cherish A View Of Me In That Condition At Least Once In A While.

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.

I Get An Urge, Like A Pregnant Elephant, To Go Away And Give Birth To A Book.

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

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

My General View Is That Best Actor Best Suited To Role Should Get The Job. Obviously When It Comes To Colour And Issues Of Ethnicity The Choice Is Clear. But I Do Not Believe You Have To Be Transgender Or Have Undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery To Be Able Play A Character Who Has.acting Is Acting After All.

If You Are Hungry For Food, You Are Prepared To Hunt High And Low For It. If You Are Hungry For Information It Is The Same. Information Is All Around Us, Now More Than Ever Before In Human History. You Barely Have To Stir Or Incommode Yourself To Find Things Out. 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.

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