When I’m writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.
ALAN ALDABe as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are.
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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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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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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.
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I really don’t like plays or movies that service propaganda.
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People who laugh together generally don’t kill each other.
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What works for me is working out when it’s useful to use that anger.
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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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It tends to break out at unexpected times like a rare virus and mostly people with compassion and understanding are susceptible to it.
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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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I’m most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.
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We’re highly social animals – I’m told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.
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I’ve been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity.
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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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Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.
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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.
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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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This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people’s holding beliefs other than their own?
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Everybody’s on their toes and focused on what we’re about to do, and then there’s this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can.
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Begin challenging your own assumptions.
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Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.
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Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
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Insanity is just a state of mind.
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If you don’t listen deeply, the connection won’t take place.
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You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
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Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe – you can’t take a taxi.
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