Stephen Fry - People Quotes

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What decent person would want to spend a life picking and cavilling? Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"... you know'.

Stephen Fry
People still insist on things like holistic healing and things that have no real basis in evidence because they want it to be true — it's as simple as that.

Stephen Fry
Alternative medicine people call themselves "holistic" and say it's the "whole" approach. Well, if it's the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation.

Stephen Fry
There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music.

Stephen Fry
Do you know who would be the last person ever to be accepted as a Prince of the Church? The Galilean carpenter. That Jew. They would kick him out before he tried to cross the threshold. He would be so ill-at-ease in the Church. That simple and remarkable man, if he said the things that he was said to have said. What would he think... what would he think of St. Peter's? What would he think of the wealth, and the power, and the self-justification, and the wheedling apologies? (Applause) What would he think of a man who calls himself the Father, a celibate, who dares to lecture people on what family values are? What would he think of any of that? He would be horrified.

Stephen Fry
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 fucking what?

Stephen Fry
It's the strangest thing about this Church- it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and our rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it's fun, it's jolly; because it's a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It's a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.

Stephen Fry
All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies.... God, if there's a word that drives me mad it's energy used in a nonsensical way—don't get me started!

Stephen Fry
I really do believe that there are those who would like and trust me better if they saw me weeping into a whisky, making a fool of myself, getting aggressive, maudlin and drunkenly out of control. I have never found those states in others anything other than tiring, awkward, embarrassing and fantastically dull, but I am quite sure that people would cherish a view of me in that condition at least once in a while.

Stephen Fry
People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can't

Stephen Fry
Well, my interpretation is no more valid than anyone else's, but I would say in terms of medicine, people want to take control of their own lives, and ironically they seem to think that they are taking control of their lives more by using so-called complementary or alternative medicines than by using orthodox medicine. In other words, they think it's a statement of originality and individuality. To you and me it seems self-evidently ridiculous, this homeopathic medicine. It is so preposterous, and yet some people I know and respect insist on believing it.

Stephen Fry
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.

Stephen Fry
I was happy there. Which is to say I was not unhappy there. Unhappiness and happiness I have always been able to carry about with me, irrespective of place and people, because I have never joined in.

Stephen Fry
As absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.

Stephen Fry