Stephen Fry Quotes

You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same ballgame.

You are who you are when nobody's watching.

Estate agents: like them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.

As I say I don't want to kill myself, I just wouldn't mind dying.

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.

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t

Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave.

Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books

Nothing in this world is at it seems. Except, possibly, porridge.

All the big words -virtue, justice, truth, ...- are dwarfed by the greatness of kindness

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.

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.

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.

A cousin of mine who was a casualty surgeon in Manhattan tells me that he and his colleagues had a one-word nickname for bikers: Donors. Rather chilling.

Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.

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.

I may have looked happy but inside I was hopelessly depressed.

People still don't get how astounding Darwinism is. People think what shocked everybody was that Charles Darwin seemed to be saying we had descended from apes.

Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else

It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.

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.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?

Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist

I shouldn't be saying this, high treason really, but I sometimes wonder if Americans aren't fooled by our accent into detecting a brilliance that may not really be there.

Homosexuals are not interested in making other people homosexuals. Homophobes are interested in making other people homophobes.

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

Having a great intellect is no path to being happy.

This is the point. One technology doesn't replace another, it complements. Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.

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.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

My first words, as I was being born [...] I looked up at my mother and said, 'that's the last time I'm going up one of those.

You either get Norfolk, with its wild roughness and uncultivated oddities, or you don't. It's not all soft and lovely. It doesn't ask to be loved.

I think we have all experienced passion that is not in any sense reasonable.

My secret is that I have never thought there is a secret to anything in life. Passion. Love. Drive. Work. Work. Work. Dull but true.

I want you to know that you are not alone in your being alone.

There is no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes.

When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart.

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.

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.

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.

In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire.

Those who rule the world get so little opportunity to run about and laugh and play in it.

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.

It only takes a room of Americans for the English and Australians to realise how much we have in common.

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

You don't sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn't work like that.

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?

I think faith in each other is much harder than faith in God...

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