Best 107 quotes of Alan Alda on MyQuotes

Alan Alda

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I've seen actors do that. But often it's a mechanical transformation, which isn't as interesting, and you've got to be careful how you go about something like that, I think.

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    Alan Alda

    artists try to say things that can't be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling; 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.

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    Alan Alda

    As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

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    Alan Alda

    Be brave enough to live creatively.

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    Alan Alda

    Be brave enough to live creatively . . . what you'll discover will be wonderful: yourself.

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    Alan Alda

    Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

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    Alan Alda

    Don't be upset that it takes a long, long time to find wisdom because nobody knows where wisdom can be found. 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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    Alan Alda

    During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. 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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    Alan Alda

    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. 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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    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. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn't go back.

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    Alan Alda

    For humans, flying isn't magic, it's physics.

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    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.

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    Alan Alda

    Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.

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    Alan Alda

    How can I ever hope to communicate something to you unless I get signals back from you that I'm on the right track or that I've started at some place that you're familiar with?

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    Alan Alda

    I don't really worry about the size of the part much any more. It's nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there's something playable there, and if it's interesting to do, then that's nice.

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    Alan Alda

    I dont see we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. 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. 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. So every day till the end of this campaign, Ill answer any question anyone has on government, but if you have a question on religion, please, go to church.

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    Alan Alda

    If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.

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    Alan Alda

    I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

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    Alan Alda

    If you don't listen deeply, the connection won't take place.... [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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    Alan Alda

    If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.

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    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.

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    Alan Alda

    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.

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    Alan Alda

    I'm an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it's useful to use that anger.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    I'm very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they're making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that.

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    Alan Alda

    Insanity is just a state of mind.

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    Alan Alda

    In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

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    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.

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    Alan Alda

    I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

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    Alan Alda

    I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. 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. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. 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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    Alan Alda

    It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can't put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn't be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.

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    Alan Alda

    It's always better to be wise than to be smart.

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    Alan Alda

    It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

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    Alan Alda

    It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

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    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.

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    Alan Alda

    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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    Alan Alda

    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. All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you're not expecting it.

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    Alan Alda

    I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. 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?