Explore Quotes by Stephen Fry

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

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.

Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distills an idea.

A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there

Hey-ho, it's raining inside: it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow and when it does, I shall take full advantage.

If there is a sort of national American emotion I would call it optimism. If there is an English one I would call it embarrassment - not even pessimism - just sheer shame, embarrassment and confusion.

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

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

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

How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?

And of course you are mad, if by a madman we mean a mind that questions and rejects every civilized norm.

Well, isn't it splendid & rather toffee?

At least 260 species of animal have been noted exhibiting homosexual behavior but only one species of animal ever, so far as we know, has exhibited homophobic behavior - and that's the human being.

Thank you for your input; I can tell you are struggling towards being interesting.

Come back, and do that thing, be lovely to each-other.

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.

History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction.

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

[...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.

Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me. Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper.