I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
ALAN BENNETTLife is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
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We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.
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Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.
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So, half a dozen of us tried – not all of us in history – and we all eventually got in. So, to that extent, it [The History Boys] comes out of my own experience.
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Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting.
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But then, when I did go, the contrast between Leeds, which was very black and sooty in those days, and Cambridge, which seemed like something out of a fairystory, in the grip of a hard frost, was just wonderful.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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It [Cambridge] wasn’t a holy grail in the sense that I’d never been to Cambridge.
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A book, as it were, closes the book.
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You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
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Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds.
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Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
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It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.
ALAN BENNETT






