Religion - Shit it. (From an episode of Q.I)

Unsourced

Other Stephen Fry Quotes

The day I stop learning is the day it all goes wrong and I start twitching my middle-class curtains, glaring at strangers and shopping for lawn mowers. - View Quote Details on The day I stop learning is the day it all…
My first words, as I was being born… I looked up at my mother and said, “that’s the last time I’m coming out one of those.” - View Quote Details on My first words, as I was being born… I looked…
greasy, miserable, British and pathetic - View Quote Details on greasy, miserable, British and pathetic
I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing between switching out the bedside lamp and the sudden indignity of rebirth: the slaps, the brightness, the tubing, the speed, the urgent insistence that I be choked back into breathing life. I have felt so sorry for babies ever since. - View Quote Details on I remember nothing of this, no ambulance rides, nothing. Nothing…
I was asked to be on that Grumpy Old Men programme and I refused because I said, ‘If I go on, I will be grumpy about grumpy old men.’ I think there’s nothing more pathetic than people moaning about mobile phones. - View Quote Details on I was asked to be on that Grumpy Old Men…
Beyond question, the north Norfolk coastline is the place where I feel happiest in the world: from Dersingham to Blakeney is just superb. It’s the beaches, the tide, the skies, the birds and the fishermen, the people who live and work there. It’s in danger of becoming Notting Hill-by-the-sea, it’s so desirable. - View Quote Details on Beyond question, the north Norfolk coastline is the place where…
I don’t think we should ever allow religion the trick of maintaining that the spiritual and the beautiful and the noble and the altruistic and the morally strong and the virtuous are in any way inventions of religion or particular or peculiar to religion. It’s certainly true that you could say the Christ who said “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” - that’s a wonderful to have said. Anyone who said that would earn a great deal of respect and interest, you’d say that’s one of most beautiful phrases ever, ever uttered. But there is no, absolutely no monopoly on beauty and truth in religion, and I suppose one of the reasons that I’m so fond of the Greeks, and one of the reasons that the great radical and poet Shelley wrote his Prometheus Unbound was that he understood that if you were to compare the Genesis myth, which has, which had bedeviled our culture, the Western European culture for a very long time indeed, for two thousand years, it was essentially a myth in which we should be ashamed of ourselves. God says: who told you you were naked? What possible reason have we to believe that we are naked or that if we are naked there is something to be ashamed of, that what we are and what we do is something for which we should ever apologise, we should apologise for our dreams, our impulses, our appetites, our drives, our desires, are not things to apologise for. Our actions sometimes we do apologise for and we excoriate ourselves for and rightly, but that’s the Genesis myth. The Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and who gave to his favourite - his favourite mortal: man. In other words what the Greeks were saying is that we have divine fire, whatever is divine is in us, as humans. We are as good as the gods. The gods are capricious and mean and foolish and stupid and jealous and rapine and all the things that Greek mythology show us that they are, and that’s a much better it seems to me - and for that the gods punished Prometheus and chained him to the Caucasus and vultures chewed away at his liver everyday as it regrew because he was immortal of course, and Shelley quite rightly understood - and interestingly his wife of course wrote Frankenstein as the modern Prometheus - understood that that mythological idea, that champion of a real humanity and a real humanism, as we’ve come to call it, is we are captains of our soul and masters of our destiny, and that we contain any divine fire that there is, divine fire that is fine and great. I mean it’s perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God he has lost all possible taste. You’ve only got to look - forget the aggression and unpleasantness of the radical right or the Islamic hordes to the East - the sheer lack of intelligence and insight and ability to express themselves and to enthuse others of the priesthood and the clerisy here, in this country, and indeed in Europe, you know God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing, you know? That’s what religion has become a feeble and anaemic nonsense, because we understood that the fire was within us, it was not in some idol on an altar, whether it was a gold cross or whether it was a Buddha or anything else, that we have it. The fault is in our stars, but also the glory is (correcting himself) in us not in our stars. The glory - anything - we take credit for what is great about man and we take blame for what is dreadful about man, we neither grovel or apologise at the feet of a god, or are so infantile as to project the idea that we once had a father as human beings and we therefore should have a divine one too. We have to grow up, which is partly what Christopher was saying. - View Quote Details on I don’t think we should ever allow religion the trick…
Oh, I love TV. I’ve got cable with all the bells and whistles. Sunday nights are perfect for sinking into a Foyle’s War or a Midsomer Murders. - View Quote Details on Oh, I love TV. I’ve got cable with all the…
Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good. - View Quote Details on Many people would no more think of entering journalism than…
If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears. - View Quote Details on If I had a large amount of money I should…