Quotes by Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

…Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that what is taken to be true. It’s the currency if living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?

Differences

Long

Taken

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.

Butterfly

Dream

Two

A circle is the longest distance to same point.

Art

Distance

Philosophy

A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he’s someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.

Interesting

Stories

Thinking

A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.

Education

Genuine Love

Men

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

Black

Comedy

Errors

A scholar’s business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can’t have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.

Doe

Giving

Sound

A writer doesn’t really have much of a function on a movie set.

Function

Movie Sets

Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn’t death! You scream and choke and sink to your knees but it doesn’t bring death home to anyone- it doesn’t catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says- ‘One day you are going to die.

Home

One Day

Skulls

And for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute.

Sound

Three

Wind

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Adaptation

Adventure

Advice

Age

Alive

Answers

Anxiety

Arcadia

Arms

Arrows

Art

Artist

Atheist

Balance

Beautiful

Beauty

Believe

Biographies

Birthday

Black

Blood

Blue

Blunt

Body

Book

Borrowed

Boxes

Buckets

Butterfly

Causes

Character

Choices

Christian

Clever

Clothes

Clouds

Coffee

Coins

Comedy

Common Sense

Compass

Conservative

Conspiracy

Crafts

Defects

Defense

Delighted

Desire

Dialogue

Differences

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard

…Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that what is taken to be true. It’s the currency if living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions. What do you assume?

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.

A circle is the longest distance to same point.

A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he’s someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.

A genuine love of learning is one of the two delinquencies which cause blindness and lead a young man to ruin.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

A writer doesn’t really have much of a function on a movie set.

Actors! The mechanics of cheap melodrama! That isn’t death! You scream and choke and sink to your knees but it doesn’t bring death home to anyone- it doesn’t catch them unawares and start the whisper in their skulls that says- ‘One day you are going to die.

And for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute.

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Topics by Tom Stoppard

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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