During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me.
ALAN ALDAI found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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I’m in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.
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It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn’t look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy – I mean Jimmy as the character.
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life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.
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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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The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.
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I have thought about punching people out. Sometimes, I’ve thought, ‘Why don’t I just act on that impulse?’ But then, I’ve never hit anybody in anger. Hey! I’ve never hit anybody for fun.
ALAN ALDA -
I’m an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger.
ALAN ALDA -
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.
ALAN ALDA -
A taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable.
ALAN ALDA -
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.
ALAN ALDA -
Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.
ALAN ALDA -
Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
ALAN ALDA -
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.
ALAN ALDA -
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?
ALAN ALDA -
Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison. On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.
ALAN ALDA -
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.
ALAN ALDA -
The one hour live debate in the West Wing that we did was one of the most exciting times for me on stage or on camera, because anything could go wrong.
ALAN ALDA -
Be brave enough to live creatively . . . what you’ll discover will be wonderful: yourself.
ALAN ALDA -
Don’t be upset that it takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found.
ALAN ALDA -
And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to.
ALAN ALDA -
For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff.
ALAN ALDA -
I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!
ALAN ALDA -
Being mystified is a good beginning, because you won’t do what you’ve done before.
ALAN ALDA -
Musicals are hard for me because I got thrown out of the glee club in high school, because I couldn’t sing in tune at the time.
ALAN ALDA -
War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.
ALAN ALDA -
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.
ALAN ALDA