[BITList] Stephen Fry at 60: the polymath's wisest and wittiest quotes

[John Feltham]

24 August 2017
 
Stephen Fry at 60: the polymath's wisest and wittiest quotes
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/stephen-fry-60-polymaths-wisest-wittiest-quotes/ <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/stephen-fry-60-polymaths-wisest-wittiest-quotes/>
 
 
Stephen Fry at 60: the polymath's wisest and wittiest quotes 

 

Stephen Fry, who is 60 today Credit: Dominic Steinmann 

Telegraph Reporters <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/telegraph-reporters/>24 August 2017 • 1:34pm
Today is the 60th birthday of Stephen Fry, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/11628710/When-Stephen-Fry-met-Jony-Ive-the-self-confessed-fanboi-meets-Apples-newly-promoted-chief-design-officer.html> a polymath, awards host, quiz show behemoth, writer, actor and the nation's favourite inappropriate uncle. 
To mark the occasion, let's take a stroll through 60 of Mr Fry's wisest and wittiest quotes. (Or is it quotations? He'd probably correct us.)
We begin, fittingly enough, with this bon mot...
"I don't need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me."
Sorry, Stephen.
Stephen Fry's best quotes 
01:14
On life

"The beauty of the brain is that you can still be as greedy as you like for knowledge and it doesn’t show."
"It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so f***ing what?"
"The beauty of the brain is that you can still be as greedy as you like for knowledge and it doesn’t show."
"God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of 'sharing'."
"No, you can't lick the system, but you can give it a damn good fondling."
"Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive."
On getting married <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/27/oscars-2017-parties-pictures/stephen-fry-james-corden-pose-partners-elliott-spencer-julia/>: "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."
"You are who you are when nobody's watching."
[On his then new facial hair at the Baftas] "I've a very strong feeling that I'm not the only actor who's come here this evening with a beard." 
“I've always believed it right for young people to drink. Not to be alcoholic of course, that is a passive state of being, not a positive action. But it is good to drink to excess.” 

Fry and the Queen in 2014 Credit: AFP 
“I like to wake up each morning and not know what I think; that I may reinvent myself in some way.” 
“Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.” 
On language

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators”.
"Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea."
"It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue."
​[quoting a friend] "My first words, as I was being born... I looked up at my mother and said, "that's the last time I'm coming out one of those."
"I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today - whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me. But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind."
Stephen Fry's guide to being British 
02:55
"There is no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes."
“I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.” 
“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.” 
“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.” 
“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.” 
“The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a f***ing lunatic.” 
On the world

​"A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there." 
​"I think animal testing is cruel. They get all nervous and give silly answers."
[On airline food] "Anything white is sweet, anything brown is meat, anything grey – don't eat."
"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."
Stephen Fry reveals who he'd like to dry hump 
03:28
"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."
"When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart."
“Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books.” 
“Like a Frenchman, far from home, catching a whiff of Gauloise.” 
On culture

[On Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln] “Last year, I actually got several emails inviting me to join this film. ‘At last, the call from Steven Spielberg has come!’, I thought. Sadly, when I looked closer, I realised that I’d been invited to join LinkedIn.”
[On Penelope Cruz] “So popular that they’ve named a beach, a park and a leisure activity after her."

Stephen Fry and his husband, Elliot Spencer Credit: Eddie Mulholland 
[On Alicia Vikander] “A woman so Swedish she comes flat-packed.” 
[On Oprah Winfrey] "Her performance was so moving in The Butler, I almost gave mine the afternoon off."
[What the Americans bring to Bond] “So, half a century of James Bond. We are so proud of it. An enduring collaboration of dashing British style and eccentricity, and that very special American quality of – oh, what’s the word – money.” 
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/9730525/The-Hobbit-An-Unexpected-Journey-movie-review.html> – a film I played a small part in, though my part remains in the cutting-room, thus making it, for me, The Hobbit: A Wasted Bloody Journey [… But] if they can find a way to squeeze – by which I mean, of course, ‘lovingly craft’ – another six films out of the slim volume that Tolkien wrote, you can expect to see me in The Hobbit 9: Are We Nearly Home Yet, Gandalf?” 
“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 in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug  Credit: Warner Bros 
[On the Da Vinci Code] "It is complete loose stool water. It is arse-gravy of the worst kind."
“Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise".
The wit

"Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties."
"An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."
"Thank you for your input; I can tell you are struggling towards being interesting."
“The short answer to that is 'no.' The long answer is 'f*** no.” 
"Better sexy and racy than sexist and racist."
“How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?”
Stephen Fry: more cocaine confessions 
02:01
[On Hugh Laurie] “He’s slightly knock-kneed and his nipples are too far apart, but he’s otherwise almost perfect.”
“I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party.” 
“I have Van Gogh's ear for music” 
“Estate agents: like them or loathe them, you'd be mad not to loathe them.” 
“Sex without smiling is as sickly and as base as vodka and tonic without ice.”  ​
The wisdom

"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
"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."
Stephen Fry speaks about mental health issues for Heads Together 
01:19
“Wanting to be liked is often a very unlikeable characteristic.” 
“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.” 
“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.” 
“In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire.” 
“I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.” 


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