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Tom Stoppard Quotes (1937-)
Writer, Playwright
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Tom Stoppard quotes.
βThe media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.β
β(Falls down in a drunken stupor): Let's sit down.β
βPublic postures have the configuration of private derangement.β
βI write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.β
βI agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.β
βAlexander: How the world must have been changing while I was holding it still.β
βThe days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.β
βI still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.β
βRevolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering; the capacity for self-indulgence changes hands.β
βAn essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.β
βIt is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.β
βIt seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable β¦ it's better to be quotable than honest.β
βThe Church's idea of the good and the beautiful excludes sexual aberration, apart from chastity, I suppose because it's the rarestβ
βI had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign languages, and I am not sure that I approve. It's the sort of thing that can only broaden a girl's mind.β
Tom Stoppard Quotes by Topic
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Tom Stoppard on Absurdism 3 quotes
βThere must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said β no. But somehow we missed it.β
Tom Stoppard on Quotations
βIt's better to be quotable than to be honest.β
Tom Stoppard on Power
Tom Stoppard on Nonsense
Tom Stoppard on Attitude
Tom Stoppard on Atheism
βIncluding, I suppose, death. ... It's an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of crutch for those who can't bear the reality of God.β
Tom Stoppard on Freedom of the press
Tom Stoppard on Science
βIf you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.β
Tom Stoppard on Statistics
βThomasina: If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers? Septimus: We do. Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture? Septimus: I do not know. Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.β
What Tom Stoppard Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Tom Stoppard shared regarding contemporaries.
Tom Stoppard on Samuel Beckett
βThe prospect of reading Beckett's letters quickens the blood like no other's, and one must hope to stay alive until the fourth volume is safely delivered.β
Tom Stoppard on Ted Hughes
βOrghast aims to be a leveller of audiences by appealing not to semantic athleticism but to the instinctive recognition of a "mental state" within a sound. One can hardly imagine a bolder challenge to the limits of narrative.β
Quotes About Tom Stoppard
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Source on Tom Stoppard
β(Which writers β novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets β working today do you admire most?) Tom Stoppard is in my pantheon. I just saw βLeopoldstadtβ on Broadway, and was equally moved and impressed. (Moved to the point of sobbing, impressed to the point of continued hero worship.) His βArcadiaβ is my favorite play, and had a seismic impact on my writing.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Tom Stoppard
βIt is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.β
βMy work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.β
βIf you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.β
βResponsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.β
βA movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afarβ you pretend it's not there.β
βGood things, when short, are twice as good.β
βFrom principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.β