[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.
ALAN ALDAThey’re supposed to be gigantic explosions and they’re just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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It’s always better to be wise than to be smart.
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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.
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All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you’re not expecting it.
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I’m not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn’t interest me.
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I wouldn’t live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.
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I’ve played a murderer, so certainly I think I can play a Republican.
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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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Insanity is just a state of mind.
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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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Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah.
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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.
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You wouldn’t want to be called a sell-out by selling a product.
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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!
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If I don’t win, I’ll just wait until I’m nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?
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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.
ALAN ALDA