Tom Stoppard Quotes

Ultimately, what we're striving for is people being allowed to do what they want and not feeling they should or shouldn't do certain things.

Anybody, anywhere in the world, all they want is to be free, to choose what they want to do without having someone tell them how to do it.

You can only be free as an artist if you're free as a person.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

I'm anti-religious. I don't like people telling me what to do.

I have always maintained that society has no business dictating morality.

Do not allow the Church or the State to govern your thought or dictate your judgment.

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

Privacy is the right to do what you feel guilty about.

Whom we love, how we love... how can the State decide that for us?

There should be no hindrance to what we want to do, what we want to wear, what we think and how we want to travel. Do what you want to do as long as you are not breaking any law.

Who are the governing bodies to say what is a good and a bad behaviour? I think that's unacceptable, even from an ethical point of view. I don't think anyone on this planet should be able to point at people and say this. For example, if it's not dangerous for other people, you should be allowed to break a racket. It's my racket, it's my problem.

We can't stop people from thinking what they want to.

Nobody can stop me from playing.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

Government should stay the hell out of people's business.

Within the field of a secular society, which is a sort of neutral frame that allows individuals to develop their own lives, so long as they don't annoy their neighbors too much, each of us has an individual myth that's driving us, which we may or may not know.

You ain't got but one life. You ought to live it the way you want.

People are free to do whatever they want to do.

Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

The wise man should withdraw his soul within, out of the crowd, and keep it in freedom and power to judge things freely; but as for externals, he should wholly follow the accepted fashions and forms.

Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

I can do what I want. And I always do, do what I want.