Tom Stoppard

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Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
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Tom Stoppard Quotes

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.
My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.
The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.
It's not the voting that's democracy it's the counting.
I think that the present is worth attention, one shouldn't sacrifice it to future conceptions of, of this future or that future.

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