Top 380 Stephen Fry Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “As I say I don’t want to kill myself, I just wouldn’t mind dying.”

— Stephen Fry

2. “You are who you are when nobody’s watching.”

— Stephen Fry

3. “We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

— Stephen Fry

4. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.”

— Stephen Fry

5. “I want you to know that you are not alone in your being alone.”

— Stephen Fry

6. “If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.”

— Stephen Fry

7. “Better sexy and racy Than sexist and racist.”

— Stephen Fry

8. “It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”

— Stephen Fry

9. “The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

— Stephen Fry

10. “Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars.”

— Stephen Fry

11. “If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people in the world?”

— Stephen Fry

12. “Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

— Stephen Fry

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

— Stephen Fry

14. “The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.”

— Stephen Fry

15. “The English language is an arsenal of weapons. If you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded, you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.”

— Stephen Fry

16. “Wisdom is probably the ability to cope. That’s why someone who has to walk seven miles every day to get water for their children can be wiser than someone sitting behind a desk in Wall Street.”

— Stephen Fry

17. “The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. That, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church, in a nutshell.”

— Stephen Fry

18. “Sometimes there just isn’t enough vomit in the world.”

— Stephen Fry

19. “I’m afraid I don’t believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith.”

— Stephen Fry

20. “People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t.”

— Stephen Fry

21. “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.”

— Stephen Fry

22. “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.”

— Stephen Fry

23. “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.”

— Stephen Fry

24. “Like vichyssoise, revenge is a dish best served cold.”

— Stephen Fry

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

— Stephen Fry

26. “Part of life is learning what to be ashamed of and what to be proud of.”

— Stephen Fry

27. “You can’t just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children.”

— Stephen Fry

28. “How can I tell you what I think until I’ve heard what I’m going to say?”

— Stephen Fry

29. “I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”

— Stephen Fry

30. “You don’t sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn’t work like that.”

— Stephen Fry

31. “I found it all about as arousing as a Tupperware party.”

— Stephen Fry

32. “You can’t reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.”

— Stephen Fry

33. “Talent is inborn, but technique is learned.”

— Stephen Fry

34. “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.”

— Stephen Fry

35. “It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.”

— Stephen Fry

36. “I think I’m most nervous about revealing how nervous I have always been. People think me calm, confident, poised. Inside I’m a jelly...”

— Stephen Fry

37. “If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears.”

— Stephen Fry

38. “Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.”

— Stephen Fry

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

— Stephen Fry

Featured in: Book Quotes

40. “A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn’t there.”

— Stephen Fry

41. “Mankind can live free in a society hemmed in by laws, but we have yet to find a historical example of mankind living free in lawless anarchy.”

— Stephen Fry

42. “Alternative medicine people call themselves “holistic” and say it’s the “whole” approach. Well, if it’s the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation.”

— Stephen Fry

43. “A true thing, poorly expressed, is a lie.”

— Stephen Fry

44. “I’m fat because I’m greedy, and if my mind is fat it’s because I’m curious.”

— Stephen Fry

45. “It’s extremely unlucky to be superstitious, for no other reason than it is always unlucky to be colossally stupid.”

— Stephen Fry

46. “Wine can be a better teacher than ink, and banter is often better than books.”

— Stephen Fry

Featured in: Book Quotes

47. “I suppose that there is no point wasting time being lazy, though of course indolence in a divine way, actually has its advantages.”

— Stephen Fry

48. “Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.”

— Stephen Fry

49. “I never quite dare to believe I’m brave enough to be an artist, but I’m on the side of artists. I think of myself as a bit of a Salieri, looking with longing eyes at Mozart.”

— Stephen Fry

50. “You’ll often hear the phrase “science doesn’t know everything.” Well, of course it doesn’t know everything. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean that it knows nothing.”

— Stephen Fry