#the

I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#believe #change #change the world #i #immediate

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#person #responsibilities #shoulder #them #who

I've seldom minded other people's opinions, but the other side of that coin is that I've seldom been interested by them, um their opinions about me I mean. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#been #coin #i #interested #me

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. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#behave #between #contradiction #imposed #kind

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself. ↗

— Rex Stout

#been #being #being myself #bother #busy

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. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#authorities #autocracy #dictatorship #envied #freedom

I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#grateful #happen #hold #i #often

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. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#beautiful #choose #chose #had #i

The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#any #defense #exists #idea #institution

The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#between #collections #deal #dissolve #distinctions