When you've seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.
Interpretation
This quote humorously suggests that clothing serves a purpose related to modesty and social norms.
Stephen Fry's quote humorously reflects on the natural state of humans, using the image of a nude infant performing a backward somersault to illustrate the innocence of being unclothed. It suggests that while we may be comfortable in our skin as infants, societal expectations and norms lead us to adopt clothing as a necessary protection against embarrassment and maintain modesty in a more complex social world.
In practice
This could be used in a comedic speech to break the ice.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
I think as much as I talk about humour being a defence mechanism, I'm also really grateful that I developed it, because I now have it as a choice, rather than a panic button. I feel like it's there if I want to use it. It's fun.
I'm not just a pundit - I'm a comedian.
I have rooms full of little dongly things and don't want any more. Half the little dongly things I've got, I don't even know what gizmo they're for. More importantly, half the gizmos I've got, I don't know where their little dongly thing is.
And thus being totally preoccupied, he rode so slowly that the sun was soon glowing with such intense heat that it would have melted his brains, if he'd had any.
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.