Stephen Fry Quotes

British comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He first came to prominence as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989–1995) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990–1993). He also starred in the sketch series Alfresco (1983–1984) alongside Laurie, Emma Thompson, and Robbie Coltrane and in Blackadder (1986–1989) alongside Rowan Atkinson. Since 2011 he has served as president of the mental health charity Mind. In 2025, he was knighted for services to mental health awareness, the environment and charity.

Fry's film acting roles include playing his idol Oscar Wilde in the film Wilde (1997), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor; Inspector Thompson in Robert Altman's murder mystery Gosford Park (2001); and Mr. Johnson in Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship (2016). He has also had roles in the films Chariots of Fire (1981), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), V for Vendetta (2005), and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011). He portrays the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and its 2016 sequel, and the Master of Lake-town in the film series adaptation of The Hobbit. Between 2001 and 2017, he hosted the British Academy Film Awards 12 times.

Fry's television roles include Lord Melchett in the BBC television comedy series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom, as well as recurring guest roles as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the American crime series Bones and Arthur Garrison MP on the Channel 4 period drama It's a Sin. He has also written and presented several documentary series, including the Emmy Award-winning Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, which saw him explore his bipolar disorder, and the travel series Stephen Fry in America. He was the longtime host of the BBC television quiz show QI, with his tenure lasting from 2003 to 2016, during which he was nominated for six British Academy Television Awards. He appears frequently on other panel games, such as the radio programmes Just a Minute and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. In 2006, the British public ranked Fry number 9 in ITV's poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars.

From: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Birth Name: Stephen John Fry

Alternative Names: Sir Stephen Fry • Sir Stephen John Fry

From Wikidata (CC0)

It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness.

My mother has an absolute passion for sour fruit and can strip a gooseberry bush quicker than a priest can strip a choirboy.

I know that my early life was at one and the same time so common as to be unremarkable, and so strange as to be the stuff of fiction. I know of course that this is how all human lives are, but that it is only given to a few of us to luxuriate in the bath of self-revelation, self-curiosity, apology, revenge, bafflement, vanity and egoism that goes under the name Autobiography. You have seen me at my washpot scrubbing at the grime of years: to wallow in a washpot may not be the same thing as to be purified and cleansed, but I have come away from this very draining, highly bewildering and passionately intense few months feeling slightly less dirty. Less dirty about the first twenty years of my life, at least. The second twenty, now that is another story.

I have to mime at parties when everyone sings Happy Birthday . . . mime or mumble and rumble and growl and grunt so deep that only moles, manta rays and mushrooms can hear me.

I have always disbelieved that Sicilian saying about revenge being a dish best served cold. I feel that--don't you?--when I see blinking, quivering octogenarian Nazi war criminals being led away in chains. Why not then? It's too late now. I want to see them taken back in time and punished then...Blame, certainly, is a dish only edible when served fresh and warm. Old blames, grudges and scores congeal and curdle and cause the most terrible indigestion.

I don't need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me.

The beauty of the brain is that you can still be as greedy as you like for knowledge and it doesn’t show.

I think it was Horry Walpole who remarked, “In this life one should try everything once except incest and country dancing.” It is an excellent rule, as I remarked to my mother in bed last night.