All Quotes

"Tony Aitken - Minstrel"

"Rik Mayall - Lord Flashheart"

"Hugh Laurie - Prince Ludwig"

"Tom Baker - Capt. Rum"

"Rowan Atkinson - Edmund Blackadder, Esq"

"Hugh Laurie - The Prince Regent"

"Helen Atkinson-Wood - Mrs. Miggins"

"Stephen Fry - Duke of Wellington"

"Tim McInnerny - The Scarlet Pimpernel"

"Miranda Richardson - Amy Harwood"

"Rowan Atkinson - Captain Edmund Blackadder"

"Tony Robinson - Private Baldrick"

"Hugh Laurie - Lieutenant The Honourable George Colthurst St. Barleigh"

"Stephen Fry - General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett"

"Tim McInnerny - Captain Kevin Darling"

"Miranda Richardson - Nurse Mary"

"Rik Mayall - Lord Flasheart"

"Rowan Atkinson - Sir Edmund Blackadder"

"Stephen Fry - King Charles I"

"Rowan Atkinson - Ebenezer Blackadder / Lord Edmund Blackadder / Edmund Blackadder, Esq. / Grand Admiral Blackadder"

"Tony Robinson - Baldrick / Baldrick / Sod-Off Baldrick / Baldrick"

"Miranda Richardson - Queen Elizabeth I / Asphyxia XIX"

"Stephen Fry - Lord Melchett / Lord Frondo"

"Hugh Laurie - George, the Prince Regent / Lord Pigmot"

"Robbie Coltrane - Spirit of Christmas"

"Miriam Margolyes - Queen Victoria"

"Jim Broadbent - Prince Albert"

"Rowan Atkinson - Lord Edmund Blackadder / King Edmund III / Centurion Blackaddicus"

"Tony Robinson - Sod-Off Baldrick / Baldricus"

"Miranda Richardson - Lady Elizabeth / Queen Elizabeth"

"Tim McInnerny - Archdeacon Darling / Duc de Darling / Duke of Darling"

"Hugh Laurie - Viscount George Bufton-Tufton / Consul Georgius"

"Stephen Fry - Bishop Melchett / Melchett / General Flavius Melchius / The Duke of Wellington"

"Colin Firth - William Shakespeare"

"They didn't understand it and I tried to make them see That one is only poor only if they choose to be Now I know we had no money but I was rich as I could be In my coat of many colors that Momma made for me Made just for me..."

"All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding."

"Wirklich ist jedes Kind gewissermaßen ein Genie, und jedes Genie gewissermaßen ein Kind."

"At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it."

"...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is—nothing."

"Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one."

"In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works. - vol. II, p. 582 (as cited on p. 177 of Schopenhauer: A Biography)"

"Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will."

"We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is Just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. " In India, our religions wIll never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian Wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought."

"Unde haud iniuria tuorum quidam familiarium quaesiuit: 'si quidem deus', inquit, 'est, unde mala? Bona uero unde, si non est?"

"The world is idea. This truth is by no means new. It was implicitly involved in the sceptical reflections from which Descartes started. Berkeley, however, was the first who distinctly enunciated it, and by this he has rendered a permanent service to philosophy, even though the rest of his teaching should not endure. Kant's primary mistake was the neglect of this principle... How early again this truth was recognised by the wise men of India, appearing indeed as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is pointed out by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the philosophy of the Asiatics"..."

"Thus, because Christian morals leave animals out of consideration … therefore in philosophical morals they are of course at once outlawed; they are merely "things," simply means to ends of any sort; and so they are good for vivisection, for deer-stalking, bull-fights, horse-races, etc., and they may be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy quarry carts. Shame on such a morality … which fails to recognize the Eternal Reality immanent in everything that has life, and shining forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!"

"Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness. … In former times the English plays used to finish with a petition for the King. The old Indian dramas close with these words: "May all living beings be delivered from pain." Tastes differ; but in my opinion there is no more beautiful prayer than this."

"It is asserted that beasts have no rights; the illusion is harboured that our conduct, so far as they are concerned, has no moral significance, or, as it is put in the language of these codes, that "there are no duties to be fulfilled towards animals." Such a view is one of revolting coarseness, a barbarism of the West, whose source is Judaism. In philosophy, however, it rests on the assumption, despite all evidence to the contrary, of the radical difference between man and beast,—a doctrine which, as is well known, was proclaimed with more trenchant emphasis by Descartes than by any one else: it was indeed the necessary consequence of his mistakes."

"Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men."

"Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man. This view, with the corollary that non-human living creatures are to be regarded merely as things, is at the root of the rough and altogether reckless treatment of them, which obtains in the West."