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 ALDALaugh 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.
More Alan Alda Quotes
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I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.
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What I can’t completely understand is most other people’s fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies.
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I’ve been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I’m nominated as actor in a supporting part.
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Everyone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.
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I don’t really worry about the size of the part much any more.
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I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.
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Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
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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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You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.
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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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When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
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For humans, flying isn’t magic, it’s physics.
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Almost everybody that’s well-known gets tagged with a nickname.
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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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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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Life is great-I wouldn’t know what I’d do without it.
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What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.
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I don’t talk about my beliefs too much in public probably because I feel very strongly that it’s something personal – more than personal, it’s private.
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Don’t be upset that it takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found.
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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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The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed.
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After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can’t bring back anything to life.
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Insanity is just a state of mind.
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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.
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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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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