Tom Stoppard Quotes

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.

What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.

Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.

If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice.

Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... death is not... It's the absence of presence, nothing more... the endless time of never coming back... a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes not sound...

It is better to be quotable than to be honest.

Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.

The bad end unhappily; the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to be invented. We would never love anybody if we could see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem. In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself.

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it.

Life in a box is better than no life at all... I expect.

The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

The days of the digital watch are numbered.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

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.

It is better of course to know useless things than to know nothing.

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach its conclusion.