Stephen Fry Quotes
I've always believed that everything that is said from authority is either the authority of one's own heart, one's own brain, one's own reading, one's own trust, but not the authority of someone who claims it because they're speaking for God and they know the truth because it's written in a book. That, essentially, is where I come from. In a sense, tolerance is my religion. Reason is my religion.
Fry, Stephen. Interview by Gay Byrne. The Meaning of Life, RTÉ One, 1 Feb. 2015.
This is a modern summary of the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza who developed the modern philosophical foundation of science and scientific thinking. When the authorities are clerics and religious leaders, their authority gets undermined which is why the Jews, Christians, and Muslims all excommunicated Spinoza. For the scientists, they themselves are to be rejected as determiners of knowledge and truth so they tend to do poorly in political disputes because the good scientists would never assert a belief that the politicians should listen to them just because they are great scientists and they “know.” It is the ideologues and junk scientists who are sure of their testimony and can advise with certainty. See linked quote(s).
This principle, so important to the philosophy of science, was a major component of the philosophy of Spinoza—the part that had him excommunicated by the 3 major religions of the era.
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. Since 2011, he has served as President of the mental health charity Mind.
