A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
Interpretation
Talking to oneself can be rational, whereas even nonsensical thoughts can be considered sane if they are not vocalized.
This quote by Tom Stoppard suggests that self-reflection and inner dialogue are not signs of madness, unlike societal perceptions might imply. In fact, it highlights the idea that speaking rationally to oneself is no more crazy than holding nonsensical thoughts without expressing them. It challenges the notion of sanity and asks us to consider the nature of our thoughts and how we communicate with ourselves.
In practice
In a motivational speech about mental wellness, you could use this quote to encourage self-reflection.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it... then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords.
I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have dragged through I don't know how many consciences.
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
While under precapitalistic conditions superior men were the masters on whom the masses of the inferior had to attend, under capitalism the more gifted and more able have no means to profit from their superiority other than to serve to the best of their abilities the wishes of the majority of the less gifted.
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