STF > STF's Quotes

“Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.”
― Constantin Stanislavski, My Life In Art

“Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.”
― Terrence Mann

“[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”
― Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”
― Mark Twain, Notebook

“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
― Mark Twain

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”
― Confucius

“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.”
― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Do you train for passing tests or do you train for creative inquiry?”
― Noam Chomsky

“A stage space has two rules: (1) Anything can happen and (2) Something must happen.”
― Peter Brook, The Empty Space

“Truth in theatre is always on the move. As you read this book, it is already moving out of date. it is for me an exercise, now frozen on the page. but unlike a book, the theatre has one special characteristic. It is always possible to start again. In life this is myth, we ourselves can never go back on anything. New leaves never turn, clocks never go back, we can never have a second chance. In the theatre, the slate is wiped clean all the time.

In everyday life, "if" is a fiction, in the theatre "if" is an experiment. In everyday life, "if" is an evasion, in the theatre "if" is the truth. When we are persuaded to believe in this truth then the theatre and life are one. This is a high aim. It sounds like hard work. To plays needs much work. But when we experiences the work as play, then it is not work anymore. A play is play.”
― Peter Brook

“A word does not start as a word – it is an end product which begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates the need for expression.”
― Peter Brook, The Empty Space

“It has been said that the myth is a public dream, dreams are private myths. Unfortunately we give our mythic side scant attention these days. As a result, a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions. So it remains important and salutary to speak not only of the rational and easily understood, but also of enigmatic things: the irrational and the ambiguous. To speak both privately and publicly.”
― Mary Zimmerman, Metamorphoses

“As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.”
― Athol Fugard

“A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.”
― Dario Fo

“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.”
― Anaïs Nin

“You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“When learning is purposeful, creativity blossoms. When creativity blossoms, thinking emanates. When thinking emanates, knowledge is fully lit. When knowledge is lit, economy flourishes.”
― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Indomitable Spirit

“The theatre is a machine of transformations: everything is transformed into another thing; a bald man has thick hair on his head; a man with strong legs gains a limp and a sharp-eyed person becomes blind; an actor who is an atheist immediately turns into the most pious priest on earth! ~”
― Mehmet Murat ildan, William Shakespeare

“To enter a theatre for a performance is to be inducted into a magical space, to be ushered into the sacred arena of the imagination.”
― Simon Callow, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World

“Is it possible to take river water back after it has mixed into the sea? The river and the sea are united and one now.”
― Mehmet Murat ildan, Award Winning Plays -2

“The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.”
― Bell Hooks

“Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.”
― Albert Einstein

“The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves”
― Joseph Campbell

“Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.”
― St. Teresa of Avila

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny sefishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they are not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The mime must first of all be aware of this boundless contact with things. There is no insulating layer of air between the man and the outside world. Any man who moves causes ripples in the ambient word in the same way a fish does when it moves in the water.”
― Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre