It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.
Tom Stoppard
Related We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happi... LAWRENCE KUDLOW We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by th... THOMAS JEFFERSON We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the... US DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by ... THOMAS JEFFERSON Now you know my credo: Free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. And let me add to that... LAWRENCE KUDLOW We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by th... THOMAS JEFFERSON We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by th... THOMAS JEFFERSON We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by th... THOMAS JEFFERSON Today, we stand as a united country and are much closer to the ideals set forth in our Constitution ... JIM RYUN We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by th... THOMAS JEFFERSON That the Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation as well as the more fortunate white race... STANDING BEAR I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that f... THOMAS JEFFERSON Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is part of our constitutional rights and it belongs to e... JEFFREY TAMBOR I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and... VICTORIA WOODHULL We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant... THOMAS JEFFERSON Today is a celebration of hope for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people can now take control of their ... JIM DEMINT Thomas Jefferson, that owner of many slaves, chose to begin the Declaration of Independence by direc... DAVID GRAEBER I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic hum... JIMMY CARTER The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interf... WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN The chief duty of governments, in so far as they are coercive, is to restrain those who would interf... WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN Our nation was founded on the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. LEONARD BOSWELL We believe, as our founders did, that 'the pursuit of happiness' depends upon individual lib... PAUL RYAN What Washington desperately needs now are citizen legislators that are dedicated to leading a free p... RALPH NORMAN Our democracy is dependent on people who passionately cherish the ideals of a democracy. Every man i... GEORGE TAKEI How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where... BURL IVES God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are
self-government, reason, and conscienc... JOHN DRYDEN Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder... YUVAL NOAH HARARI For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happine... JIMMY CARTER Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not. SONYA.E.WILLIAMS All too frequently, the knee jerk reaction to tragedies by the media and chattering class is to move... DAVE BRAT Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for ea... DAVID SCOTT Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th... DEYTH BANGER Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, ... GERRIT SMITH I think at the heart of the pro-life movement is the idea that all people are created equal, endowed... MIKE HUCKABEE We're celebrating life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, JENNIFER ROBERTSON Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... but only when you pay your taxes? That means your fre... STEVE MARABOLI The road to salvation is filled with many false dark turn-offs, if you take those roads they will le... GARY F EVANS... People who pretend to be your friend lead you up a garden path by saying everything that you want to... GARY F EVANS... Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revo... CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equ... MARVIN AMMORI The Declaration calls us to recognize the inherent equality of all people. And when it becomes unmis... MIKE CRAPO In the life of any actor or actress, there is inevitably a time when they will be eligible to act in... ED STOPPARD Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cor... LELAND STANFORD One pillar was the conviction that God grants life as an inalienable right, and they fought so that ... TODD AKIN If we are endowed by our Creator with rights, then why shouldn't those be attainable by gays and... BILL NELSON The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers a... ARUNDHATI ROY Millions of people acknowledge today that they do not know the meaning of life. JAMES C. DOBSON When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political b... THOMAS JEFFERSON Human rights are not a privilege granted by the few, they are a liberty entitled to all, and human r... KAY GRANGER The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at ... A.E. SAMAAN Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ... TOM STOPPARD The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to a... HANNAH ARENDT The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been ... JOHN F. KENNEDY I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been ... JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by exam... ROBERT TROUT The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happin... EPICTETUS The People have a right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happin... FRANK NORRIS People truly reaching across boundaries - be they religious or race, political or geographic. A stat... JON HUNTSMAN, JR. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been ... JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been ... JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY He's too close - he lived well into the 20th Century, ... If you look at Thomas Jefferson and presid... BRUCE TYLER "In the graveyards of our Patriotic dead are those who gave their very lives, for liberty and the pu... TOM BAKER AKA THE PONDERING MAN The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; tha... STEVEN PINKER While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So ... SARAH VOWELL The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot... SALMON P. CHASE It is not a human right. It is not one of the inalienable rights that I should have a gun capable of... DAVID HARTMAN Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded o... MITCH KAPOR There is only one kind of freedom and that's individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator... RON PAUL Devin wondered how often men did what they did, made the choices of their lives, for reasons that we... GUY GAVRIEL KAY Economic, social and cultural rights are often overlooked when we are seeing rights through a politi... JOSEPH SCHECHLA Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always ... ROBERT A. HEINLEIN I had forgotten that God, or the world, or whatever carves the rules in stone, doesn't give you time... TANA FRENCH I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit ... JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER Their fundamental difference was their judgment on human nature. Jefferson believed that people were... HAL BIDLACK Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure... MADELEINE L'ENGLE It is not in the pursuit of happiness that we find fulfillment, it is in the happiness of pursuit. DENIS WAITLEY Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the e... THOMAS JEFFERSON God knows our human nature better because He is our creator SUNDAY ADELAJA From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromis... TRYON EDWARDS From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromis... CHARLES SUMNER From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromi... CHARLES SUMNER From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromis... CHARLES SUMNER From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromis... CHARLES SUMNER From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromis... LUDWIG ERHARD I thought he did a great job at Jefferson. They were always feisty as heck. It will not be the same ... EARL GARCIA Australia and Canada were settled by adventurers, they had to break new ground. I think that is inde... TOM COCHRANE So often are they overlooked that black dogs on average spend twice as long as their lighter counter... FAYE KLEIN Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, libe... LOUIS D. BRANDEIS Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action accordi... THOMAS JEFFERSON We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by t... THOMAS JEFFERSON The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total ignorance of t... ALEXANDER HAMILTON We, humans, easily associate every Good with God and every bad with devil, ignoring the fact that Go... TARIF NAAZ Even after the dehadhyas (the belief that 'I am the body') has gone, people will say, "I saw you eat... DADA BHAGWAN I think life is difficult and that's that. I am not at all - absolutely not at all - interested ... JAMAICA KINCAID Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y... THEHEALTHFOODGURU The fundamental idea which defines a human being as a Muslim is the declaration of faith: that there... FEISAL ABDUL RAUF Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, ... WILLIAM BLACKSTONE Well, let me tell you something; I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine and Governor. . . ... RONALD REAGAN
More Tom Stoppard
Good things, when short, are twice as good. TOM STOPPARD Time is short, life is short, there's a lot to know. So I skip the entertainers in the newspaper... TOM STOPPARD The thing that happens remarkably often is that the people who are writing a dissertation believe th... TOM STOPPARD I'm offended by things and take pathetic little stands against them. TOM STOPPARD My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers. TOM STOPPARD The text loses its virginity simply by being staged: it's no longer the abstract ideal version; ... TOM STOPPARD I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones... TOM STOPPARD Any revival in which I am involved is liable to change. TOM STOPPARD Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe. TOM STOPPARD All your life, you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye. An... TOM STOPPARD Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. TOM STOPPARD The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with t... TOM STOPPARD For me, human rights simply endorse a view of life and a set of moral values that are perfectly clea... TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entry somewhere else. TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. TOM STOPPARD Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. B... TOM STOPPARD From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can lite... TOM STOPPARD I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term w... TOM STOPPARD A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors. 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TOM STOPPARD Age is a high price to pay for maturity. TOM STOPPARD In Chekhov, everything blends into its opposite, just fractionally, and this is sort of unsettling. ... TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. TOM STOPPARD Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. TOM STOPPARD Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else. TOM STOPPARD The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists. TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entry somewhere. TOM STOPPARD I don't think I can be expected to take seriously any game which takes less than three days to reach... TOM STOPPARD Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picni... TOM STOPPARD We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our prog... TOM STOPPARD We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the r... TOM STOPPARD Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering. TOM STOPPARD It is better to be quotable than to be honest. TOM STOPPARD If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older. TOM STOPPARD Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. TOM STOPPARD From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts. TOM STOPPARD I am not my body. My body is nothing without me. TOM STOPPARD If an idea's worth having once, it's worth having twice. TOM STOPPARD A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it... TOM STOPPARD In 2005, I got an email from Belarus Free Theatre. They were emailing playwrights in America and Eng... TOM STOPPARD A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not othe... TOM STOPPARD I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I t... TOM STOPPARD My intention still is to write a play to commemorate, possibly rather skeptically, the 50th annivers... TOM STOPPARD I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put ... TOM STOPPARD Maturity is a high price to pay for growing up. TOM STOPPARD A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. TOM STOPPARD People have quite a simple idea about 'Anna Karenina.' They feel that the novel is entirely ... TOM STOPPARD I have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cass... TOM STOPPARD I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of h... TOM STOPPARD What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea. TOM STOPPARD Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, ... TOM STOPPARD Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call '... TOM STOPPARD I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen o... TOM STOPPARD Success is a sort of metaphysical experience. I live exactly as I did before - only on a slightly bi... TOM STOPPARD There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we misse... TOM STOPPARD Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very... TOM STOPPARD If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it ... TOM STOPPARD I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocrac... TOM STOPPARD One of the attractions of translating 'Heroes' is that it's not the kind of play that I ... TOM STOPPARD After all these years, I definitely associate having a pen in my hand with having an ashtray just ou... TOM STOPPARD Because theatre is a story-telling art form, we feel entitled to assume that the playwright got ther... TOM STOPPARD I barely remembered my father; I'm confused between genuine memory and the few photographs that ... TOM STOPPARD I'm good at being funny. TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of... TOM STOPPARD A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, pop... TOM STOPPARD If I hadn't left Czechoslovakia, I would have been dead. TOM STOPPARD I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Co... TOM STOPPARD I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech. TOM STOPPARD The idea that being human and having rights are equivalent - that rights are inherent - is unintelli... TOM STOPPARD Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a... TOM STOPPARD Each move is dictated by the previous one--that is the meaning of order TOM STOPPARD Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to which we are...condemned. Each move... TOM STOPPARD Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society. TOM STOPPARD The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and info... TOM STOPPARD One doesn't want one's democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn... TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no...Death is...... TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything...de... TOM STOPPARD It's better to be quotable than to be honest. TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all ... I expect. TOM STOPPARD The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means. TOM STOPPARD We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on ... TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? TOM STOPPARD The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always ... TOM STOPPARD The days of the digital watch are numbered. TOM STOPPARD If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of... TOM STOPPARD I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity. TOM STOPPARD I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to the death your right to say it. TOM STOPPARD Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God TOM STOPPARD We're actors - we're the opposite of people. TOM STOPPARD It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. TOM STOPPARD Pirates could happen to anyone. TOM STOPPARD Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything... d... TOM STOPPARD I think I enlist comedy to a serious purpose. TOM STOPPARD That I have the right to express myself freely at all times in all circumstances entails the idea th... TOM STOPPARD In the end, my children put me on to Pink Floyd when they were teenagers. TOM STOPPARD Pink Floyd are one of a handful of bands I've listened to a lot and whose concerts I've been... TOM STOPPARD When I was younger, I could do something useful just by being free for half a day, but now I need fi... TOM STOPPARD You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration, then, is ... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds - if it was a bet you wouldn't take it. TOM STOPPARD For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particular... TOM STOPPARD Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' w... TOM STOPPARD A free press needs to be a respected press. TOM STOPPARD He's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks the most interesting thing about any st... TOM STOPPARD I want to support the whole idea of the humanities and teaching the humanities as being something th... TOM STOPPARD In the period before the arrival of Mrs. Thatcher, politics had been in such low esteem. Everything ... TOM STOPPARD It is no light matter to put in jeopardy a single life when it is the very singularity of each life ... TOM STOPPARD Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction! Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded sa... TOM STOPPARD THOMASINA: But then the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great... TOM STOPPARD Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie t... TOM STOPPARD My life feels, week to week, incomplete to the level of being pointless if I am not in preparation f... TOM STOPPARD I'm not one of those writers who insist they don't read reviews and don't care much abou... TOM STOPPARD All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who wr... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble, at terrible odds. If it were a bet you wouldn’t take it. TOM STOPPARD I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that a... TOM STOPPARD Lou Reed was a hero because he was an anti-hero. TOM STOPPARD Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving? TOM STOPPARD It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can w... TOM STOPPARD [Now] Bach ... a splash in the making. TOM STOPPARD What a fine persecution - to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened. TOM STOPPARD Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge t... TOM STOPPARD If you took away everything in the world that had to be invented, there'd be nothing left except a l... TOM STOPPARD Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want. TOM STOPPARD The sense of suppression, ... or self-suppression, and pressure generally which came off even this p... TOM STOPPARD James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be un... TOM STOPPARD The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility withou... TOM STOPPARD My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other... TOM STOPPARD A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's ... TOM STOPPARD Eternity's a terrible thought TOM STOPPARD We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without poss... TOM STOPPARD We're actors. We're the opposite of people. TOM STOPPARD the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics and audience. TOM STOPPARD It's wholly deserved and I am completely thrilled. As a writer he has been unswerving for 50 years, ... TOM STOPPARD wholly deserved and I'm completely thrilled. TOM STOPPARD Every exit is an entrance somewhere else TOM STOPPARD I don't respond well to the Olympic noise, which is the noise of nationalistic triumphalism. TOM STOPPARD Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a ... TOM STOPPARD Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know! TOM STOPPARD I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has ne... TOM STOPPARD It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to... TOM STOPPARD It would have been nice to have had unicorns. TOM STOPPARD It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is g... TOM STOPPARD It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has ... TOM STOPPARD Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That remin... TOM STOPPARD I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band. TOM STOPPARD You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. TOM STOPPARD Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherw... TOM STOPPARD Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female ... TOM STOPPARD HANNAH: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to te... TOM STOPPARD Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it TOM STOPPARD A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier. TOM STOPPARD It is an interesting view of atheism, as a sort of "crutch" for those who can't stand the reality of... TOM STOPPARD The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the d... TOM STOPPARD I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn'... TOM STOPPARD I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values again... TOM STOPPARD What is the society we wish to protect? Is it the society of complete surveillance for the commonwea... TOM STOPPARD Even when the writing seems very frivolous, I'm puritanical. I don't mean my subject matter.... TOM STOPPARD The idea that public safety, the safety of the innocent, is an absolute which trumps every other con... TOM STOPPARD I feel overestimated. TOM STOPPARD I'm not a theoretician about playwriting, but I have a strong sense that plays have to be pitche... TOM STOPPARD We're actors — we're the opposite of people! TOM STOPPARD Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something w... TOM STOPPARD As a writer, Harold has been unswerving for 50 years, TOM STOPPARD If you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any g... TOM STOPPARD I don't do interviews under false pretenses. TOM STOPPARD Despite the digital age, there is a very large number of venues and spaces that are looking for play... TOM STOPPARD I'm not like some other writers: I have no actual urgent need or desire to add to what's wri... TOM STOPPARD I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree... TOM STOPPARD I'm vaguely embarrassed by myself sometimes. TOM STOPPARD As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an ex... TOM STOPPARD I like dialogue that is slightly more brittle than life. I have always admired and wished to write o... TOM STOPPARD When I think of how things could have turned out, I feel as if I've dodged, not just bullets, bu... TOM STOPPARD I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have... TOM STOPPARD My scripts are possibly too talkative. Sometimes I watch a scene I've written, and occasionally ... TOM STOPPARD Nobody would be killed on the roads if the speed limit were 10 miles an hour. TOM STOPPARD There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man... TOM STOPPARD Theater in New York is nearer to the street. In London, you have to go deep into the building, usual... TOM STOPPARD I don't think falling in love in Slovakia is much different from falling in love in Tunbridge We... TOM STOPPARD GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mista... TOM STOPPARD A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself. TOM STOPPARD There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word ... TOM STOPPARD Schepisi is the sort of director who could, would, and frequently did phone me whenever he came acro... TOM STOPPARD Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on stagin... TOM STOPPARD One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that... TOM STOPPARD The fact is, I loved being English. I was very happy to be turned into an English schoolboy. TOM STOPPARD You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the ... TOM STOPPARD Free to move, speak, extemporize, and yet. We have not been cut loose. Our truancy is defined by on... TOM STOPPARD Let me get it straight. Your father was king. You were his only son. Your father dies. You are of ag... TOM STOPPARD As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it... TOM STOPPARD All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and... TOM STOPPARD We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style. TOM STOPPARD Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. ... TOM STOPPARD