Quote

The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.

Rowan Atkinson

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Rowan Atkinson
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 6
Actor
Comedian
Electrical Engineer
Film Actor
Film Producer
Manufacturer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Mr Bean
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson
Problem
Insult
Outlawing
Many
Alternatives
Stating
Things
Criticism
Interpreted
Merely
Orthodoxy
View
Sarcasm
Views
Ridicule
Clear
Sarcastic
Point
Alternative

More quotes by Rowan Atkinson

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Certainly in the second film [Maigret's Dead Man], which is quite a more unpleasant and darker story, it's quite different in tone and feel.
Rowan Atkinson
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I've no desire to hang around with a bunch of upper-class delinquents, do twenty minutes' work and then spend the rest of the day loafing about in Paris drinking gallons of champagne and having dozens of moist, pink, highly experienced French peasant girls galloping up and down my - hang on.
Rowan Atkinson
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Having spent a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background, I am aghast at the notion that it could, in effect, be made illegal to imply ridicule of a religion or to lampoon religious figures.
Rowan Atkinson
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I can be reasonably funny and light-hearted when I'm in the company of good friends, but I'm not a jokesmith. I tend to be quite serious.
Rowan Atkinson
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To Be Successful You Don't Need Beautiful Face And Heroic Body, What You Need is Skillful Mind And Ability To Perform
Rowan Atkinson
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But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.
Rowan Atkinson
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Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.
Rowan Atkinson
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The good thing about those original credit card commercials was that they were very filmic, they were like little movies, so it wasn't a big step to think well maybe we could make a big movie using this character, which we eventually did.
Rowan Atkinson
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To criticise a person for their race is a manifestly irrational and ridiculous. But to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom.
Rowan Atkinson
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It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.
Rowan Atkinson
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I like to juggle with one ball at a time. Then I put the ball down and do nothing for extended periods of time.
Rowan Atkinson
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I think you're bound to get a sense of any character that you play. It's not something you often do in comedy.
Rowan Atkinson
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I have always believed that there should be no subject about which one cannot make jokes, religion included. Clearly, one is always constricted by contemporary mores and trends because, after all, what one seeks above all is an appreciative audience.
Rowan Atkinson
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I tend to play rather odd men. People that are slightly odd or eccentric, or have a more particular attitude to life.
Rowan Atkinson
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I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It's not as flip, irrelevant and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.
Rowan Atkinson
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Of course, some would say if you have a performing inclination, then you should become a lawyer. That's a platform we use, or a priest. You know, anywhere you lecture and pontificate to people.
Rowan Atkinson
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It is very linear storytelling, and I think that's not so much the fashion. I was watching a new drama the other night which was extremely non-linear, where you flash back and flash forward in ways that certainly keeps you on your toes as the audience. There's not much of that courage with the storytelling in our Maigret film.
Rowan Atkinson
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The first couple of weeks of filming were quite tricky for me to find my feet with the character [Maigret], which wasn't helped by the story that we were telling.
Rowan Atkinson
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I want to express myself in a different way. I have a performing inclination.
Rowan Atkinson
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The path of my life is strewn with cow pats from the devil's own satanic herd!
Rowan Atkinson