649 Quotes by Tom Stoppard

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

I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.

I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of human nature that hardly lend themselves to that process.

Traitors hoist by their own petard?--or victims of the gods?--we shall never know!

I am good at being shown something and counterpunching.

A 'human right' is, by definition, timeless. It cannot adhere to some societies and not others, at some times and not at other times.

I'm attracted to the past.

Having translated two plays by Chekhov, and not speaking Russian myself - I cannot say one sentence. This may shock people... However, I am not shocked, as it is not hard to find out what the words mean.

War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.