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Tom Stoppard

104 quotes

“It was precisely this notion of infinite series which in the sixth century BC led the Greek philosopher Zeno to conclude that since an arrow shot towards a target first had to cover half the distance, and then half the remainder, and then half the remainder after that, and so on ad infinitum, the result was, as I will now demonstrate, that though an arrow is always approaching its target, it never quite gets there, and Saint Sebastian died of fright.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dotty: Archie says the Church is a monument to irrationality. George: … The National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality! — and so is a nicely kept garden, or a lover's favour, or a home for stray dogs! You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, "This is a good bacon sandwich," or, "Bedser had a good wicket.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bennett seems to be showing alarming signs of irony. I have always found that irony among the lower orders is the first sign of an awakening social consciousness. It remains to be seen whether it will grow into an armed seizure of the means of production, distribution and exchange, or spend itself in liberal journalism.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tzara: Causality is no longer fashionable owing to the war. Carr: How illogical, since the war itself had causes. I forget what they were, but it was all in the papers at the time. Something about brave little Belgium, wasn't it? Tzara: Was it? I thought it was Serbia... Carr: Brave little Serbia...? No, I don't think so. The newspapers would never have risked calling the British public to arms without a proper regard for succinct alliteration.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero. It takes courage to sit down and be counted.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I 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.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I was at school, on certain afternoons we all had to do what was called Labour — weeding, sweeping, sawing logs for the boiler-room, that sort of thing; but if you had a chit from Matron you were let off to spend the afternoon messing about in the Art Room. Labour or Art. And you've got a chit for life? Where did you get it? What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary. … I forget the third thing.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now a philosopher exploring the difficult terrain of right and wrong should not be over-impressed by the argument "a child would know the difference". But when, let us say, we are being persuaded that it is ethical to put someone in prison for reading or writing the wrong books, it is well to be reminded that you can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never got used to the way the house Trots fell into the jargon back in Grimsby — I mean, on any other subject, like the death of the novel, or the sex life of the editor's secretary, they spoke ordinary English, but as soon as they started trying to get me to join the strike it was as if their brains had been taken out and replaced by one of those little golf-ball things you get in electric typewriters... "Betrayal"… "Confrontation"… "Management"… My God, you'd need a more supple language than that to describe an argument between two amoebas.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable. Ruth: I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't stand.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mageeba: Do you know what I mean by a relatively free press, Mr. Wagner? Wagner: Not exactly, sir, no. Mageeba: I mean a free press which is edited by one of my relatives.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm showing an interest in your work. I thought you liked me showing an interest in your work. My showing. Save the gerund and screw the whale.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Public postures have the configuration of private derangement.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Buddy Holly was twenty-two. Think of what he might have gone on to achieve. I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly. What we're trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might...travel.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening! Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the wanting to know that makes us matter.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore. Thomasina: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will take his secret to the grave, telling people along the way. Betrayal is no sin if it is whimsical.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Church's idea of the good and the beautiful excludes sexual aberration, apart from chastity, I suppose because it's the rarest”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To dream of taking the sword in the breast, the bullet in the brain [...] and wake up to find the world goes wretchedly on and you will die of age and not of pain.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My life is marked by long silences.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alexander: I myself was educated in Italy. My doctorate in philosophy is from the University of Padua. Renne: Really? Philosophy? Alexander: My dissertation was on worms. Renne: Worms the philosopher? Alexander: No, just worms. Renne: Ah, the philosophy of worms. Alexander: Not at all. Worms have no philosophy, as far as is known.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alexander: No spunk, simple as that! Your brother's an army deserter! Michael: Oh yes, I've resigned my commission. Alexander: He's refusing to return to duty. Michael: On grounds of ill health, Papa. I'm sick of the Army. Alexander: No discipline, that's the problem! Michael: No, it's riddled with discipline, that's the problem. That and Poland.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Michael: "March here, march there, present arms, where's your cap?" — you've no idea, the whole Army's obsessed with playing at soldiers.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alexander: How the world must have been changing while I was holding it still.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Herzen: Marx is a bourgeois from the anus up. Natalie : Alexander! I won't have that word... Herzen: Sorry, middle-class.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bakunin: Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not — well, it's progress”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Turgenev: The names for things don't come first. Words stagger after, hopelessly trying to become the sensation.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Their coarseness is the sinew of some kind of brute confidence which is the reason England is home to every shade of political exile. They don't give asylum out of respect for asylum-seekers, but out of respect for themselves. They invented personal liberty, and they know it, and they did it without having any theories about it. They value liberty because it's liberty.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bakunin: Left to themselves people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they'd create a completely new kind of society if only people weren't so blind, stupid and selfish. Herzen: Is that the same people or different people? Bakunin: The same people.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wake me up for breakfast, if I'm not dead.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Falls down in a drunken stupor): Let's sit down.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until—“My God,” says a second man, “I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.” At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. The third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience.…“Look, look!” recites the crowd. “A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It [Hamlet’s madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, forgoing of exercise, loss of mirth, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws—riddles, quibbles and evasions; amnesia, paranoia, myopia; day-dreaming, hallucinations; stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public—knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love-sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong. And talking to himself. And talking to himself.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.”
Tom Stoppard (1937–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source