649 Quotes by Tom Stoppard

There must have been a time, in the beginning, when we could have said – no. But somehow we missed it. Oh well, we’ll know better next time.

No, no, no... you’ve got it all wrong... you can’t act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen – it’s not gasps and blood and falling about – that isn’t what makes it death. It’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all – now you see him, now you don’t, that the only thing that’s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back – an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.

ROS: Why don’t you go and have a look? GUIL: Pragmatism?! – is that all you have to offer?

As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance.

If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton’s law of motion, what becomes of free will?

I’m the kind of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal and rebut the refutation. Endlessly.

Well, we’ll know better next time.

Left to themselves people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they’d create a completely new kind of society if only people weren’t so blind, stupid and selfish.

Mr Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the well of truth – not a cabinet of vulgar curios.