Quote

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

Tom Stoppard

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Tom Stoppard
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: July 3
Dramaturge
Film Director
Journalist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Zlin
Sir Tom Stoppard
Never
Compounds
Truths
Reach
Half
Two
Truth
Something
Always
Compound

More quotes by Tom Stoppard

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It seems pointless to be quoted if one isn't going to be quotable ... it's better to be quotable than honest.
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In the theater there is often a tension, almost a contradiction, between the way real people would think and behave, and a kind of imposed dramaticness.
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I really love being in postproduction. First of all, it's all quite self-interested: You can protect things.
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Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they're not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.
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It was a different planet in 1967, the Broadway theatre. It had a little ashtray clamped to the back of every seat and the author got 10% of the gross.
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A circle is the longest distance to same point.
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It's where we're nearest to our humanness. Useless knowledge for its own sake. Useful knowledge is good, too, but it's for the faint-hearted, an elaboration of the real thing, which is only to shine some light, it doesn't matter where on what, it's the light itself, against the darkness, it's what's left of God's purpose when you take away God.
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Wars are fought for oil wells and coaling stations for control of the Dardanelles or the Suez Canal for colonial pickings to buy cheap in and conquered markets to sell dear in. War is capitalism with the gloves off.
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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.
Tom Stoppard
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Normally, even if you're on the set for 12 hours, there may be only a moment or two when you are actually useful.
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The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work.
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From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
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Uncertainty is the normal state.
Tom Stoppard
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The results of the divorce between truth and human beings can be most graphically observed in politics.
Tom Stoppard
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My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.
Tom Stoppard
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Real data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!
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Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar.
Tom Stoppard
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One bulls-eye and you're rich and famous. The rich get more famous and the famous get rich. You're the talk of the town....The sense of so much depending on success is very hard to ignore, perhaps impossible. It leads to disproportionate anxiety and disproportionate relief or disappointment.
Tom Stoppard
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Obviously, you would give your life for your children, or give them the last biscuit on the plate. But to me, the trick in life is to take that sense of generosity between kin, make it apply to the extended family and to your neighbour, your village and beyond.
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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.
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