A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Interpretation
This quote explores the nature of reality and identity through the dream of a philosopher.
In this quote, Tom Stoppard presents a thought-provoking scenario where a philosopher dreams he is a butterfly, leading to an existential contemplation about the nature of self and reality. This duality raises questions about perception, consciousness, and the distinction between dreams and waking life, suggesting that one’s truths can be fluid and subject to interpretation.
In practice
During a philosophy class discussion about the nature of reality.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.
People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives.
We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.
The three wishes of every man: to be healthy, to be rich by honest means, and to be beautiful.
Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.
Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.
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