All Quotes

"[Confirming their use of a women's toilet] You've got to question people's sensibility, if they're going around taking photographs of people going into toilets. I go to the loo to go to the loo. I don't know where other people's imaginations are going."

"I've had such disgusting things said to me over 37 years and now, to stand to be an MP in the seat of democracy in the United Kingdom, I've had to have such a torrent of transphobic abuse at that point when we're talking about democracy, we're talking about making people's lives better. It’s rather sad that these people feel that they want to do this attacking and this abuse online"

"[On the "fixation" about their transgender identity] I happen to be trans. It isn’t the central part of me. I also happen to play the piano. I also happen to have blue eyes."

"[On proposed gender self-id reforms and women-only spaces] I don't have all the answers [...] I happen to be trans. All I can do is say how it is for me. I can't come in and wave a magic wand and solve all the problems, because some people are very entrenched."

"There’s another name I’m going to add in as well, which is Suzy, which I wanted to be since I was 10. So I’m going to be Suzy Eddie Izzard, that’s how I’m going to roll, so people can choose what they want. They can’t make a mistake, they can’t go wrong."

"I'm severely atypically dyslexic. My spelling's all over the place: cat with a 'k', ceiling with an 's'. I-Spy games went on for ever as a kid."

"It's hyper-complex how humans work [...] Yet we're obsessed about boy-girl, whereas if a tiger is attacking you...[...] A tiger is attacking me? Is it a boy tiger, is it a girl tiger? I'm not sure — it's a f***ing tiger! You can surely check? No, I can't check. It's a tiger."

"[From a review of Sexie] Mr. Izzard, whose theme is nothing less than civilization and its multifarious contents, traffics in delirious, dizzying circles of ideas and images. On the surface they have nothing to do with one another. And yet they flow effortlessly into a single, opalescent stream of consciousness."

"Once he throws a conversational ball into the air, he keeps it in play for the rest of the night, even when you assume he's forgotten all about it. And every one of them is inspected with a magnifying eye that inflates everything to the point of absurdity."

"Yet Mr. Izzard never reads as hostile or even aggressive. Unlike most American stand-ups, he attacks neither his audience nor himself, instead creating the illusion that he is courteously letting you eavesdrop on an infinite internal dialogue."

"The sad thing is women, particularly feminists, once adored Izzard. Not only the greatest 1990s stand-up, he was truly brave. On stage and off, in lipstick, leather skirts and sparkly eye-shadow, he subverted rigid ideas about what men could be. "These aren't women's clothes," he'd say. "They’re my clothes." He called himself a "transvestite": a heterosexual guy who sometimes wore frocks. And while some men abused him in the street, women thought he was cool. Then "transvestite" became an unfashionable term and the concept of "gender identity" took hold. Whether you're a man or woman was defined not by your sexed body but your inner, soul-like essence."

"In 2019, the US podcaster Joe Rogan asked how he moved from girl to boy mode, and Izzard replied: "I take off my heels.""

"I find the idea that I can’t make fun of Eddie Izzard and Sam Smith, two of the most ridiculous people around at the moment, absurd. I wouldn’t say he's sold out. But he's in the grip of the same mania that a lot of other people are in. Eddie Izzard is trans? Really? He’s a fully intact crossdresser. How is he trans? I am as trans as Eddie Izzard."

"[Asked if he is misgendering Izzard] The Equalities Act also protects my belief that he's a man. What I find extraordinary about Eddie is he's an intelligent man. He's an enormously talented person. For him to not understand that his going into women's toilets means that men like Adam Graham [the transgender double rapist who identifies as Isla Bryson] can go into women's toilets. I just don't get how he doesn't see that. I can only imagine that he does see it and he’s ignoring it."

"There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents."

"To their own second thoughts."

"He rolls it under his tongue as a sweet morsel."

"Our creature comforts"

"None is so deaf as those that will not hear."

"They that die by famine die by inches."

"To fish in troubled waters."

"Europa es dividite per le muros de 30 linguas. Felicemente, inter iste linguas national, circa 10.000 parolas de origine grec e latin son commun. Iste preciose tresor linguistic debe esser utilisate al maximo sin mutilar un sol parola o inventar alteres."

"Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them."

"Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately."

"The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved."

"Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep."

"The better day, the worse deed."

"So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish that he did not only sigh but roar."

"Those who will not be counselled, cannot be helped. More souls are ruined by pride than by any other sin whatever."

"It was a common saying among the Puritans, "Brown bread and the Gospel is good fare.""

"Blushing is the colour of virtue."

"It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church."

"None so blind as those that will not see."

"Those may justly be reckoned void of understanding that do not bless and praise God; nor do men ever rightly use their reason till they begin to be religious, nor live as men till they live to the glory of God. As reason is the substratum or subject of religion (so that creatures which have no reason are not capable of religion), so religion is the crown and glory of reason, and we have our reason in vain, and shall one day wish we had never had it, if we do not glorify God with it."

"Not lost, but gone before."

"Those that are above business."

"Better late than never."

"Saying and doing are two things."

"Judas had given them the slip."

"Whatever we have, the property of it is God's; we have only the use of it, according to the direction of our great Lord, and for his honour."

"After a storm comes a calm."

"Men of polite learning and a liberal education."

"Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down."

"The two Indians crossed the plantation toward the slave quarters. ... "Man was not made to sweat." "That's so. See what it has done to their flesh." "Yes. Black. It has a bitter taste, too." "You have eaten of it?" "Once." ... Doom began to acquire more slaves and to cultivate some of his land, as the white people did. But he never had enough for them to do. In utter idleness the majority of them led lives transplanted whole out of African jungles ... there was a hierarchy of cousins and uncles who ruled the clan and who finally gathered in squatting conclave over the Negro question, squatting profoundly ... "We cannot eat them," one said. "Why not?" "There are too many of them." "That's true," a third said. "Once we started, we should have to eat them all. And that much flesh diet is not good for man." ... "It means work," the third said. "Let the Negroes do it," the first said. ... "Yao. Let the Negroes do it. They appear to like sweating.""

"For the holy are susceptible too to evil, even as you and I, signori; they too are helpless before sin without God's aid... and the holy can be fooled by sin as quickly as you or I, signori. Quicker, because they are holy."

"How often have Ι lain beneath rain on a strange roof thinking of home."

"My mother is a fish."

"Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid. Ain't nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be."

"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."

"Sometimes I think it ain’t none of us pure crazy and ain’t none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it ain’t so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it."