And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I think that you should.
ALAN ALDAYour assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I’d said in a book I wrote that I wasn’t a believer.
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[You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you’re listening to, where you’re not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you’re actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.
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Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah.
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A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I’ve seen actors do that.
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It’s too bad I’m not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.
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I’m greedy for that satisfaction of doing something hard and knowing that, even though I was afraid I couldn’t do it, that somehow I can deliver.
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Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?
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Jean Paul Sartre says in “No Exit” that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.
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I’m in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It’s fun.
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I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.
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Working on The West Wing was similar in many ways to my experience on M*A*S*H, because you had people willing to work late at night to get it just right.
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I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn’t really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you’re trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.
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I wouldn’t live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.
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I was brought up as a Catholic, and I’m no longer a Catholic.
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But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’
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I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.
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My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.
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I play tennis non-obsessively. I seem to beat people I play a lot or half the time, so I guess I gravitate to people who are as bad as I am.
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When I’m writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
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There’s plenty of money to be had. But you also lose your soul.
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For me, I find that even though I’ve accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn’t give me a sense of satisfaction.
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Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.
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What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing.
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I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don’t agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.
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They wont all lie to you but a lot of them will. And itll be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes.
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Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
ALAN ALDA