Alan Alda Quotes
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. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
Quotes to Explore
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Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.
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I do a lot of inspirational talks for kids, to motivate them to change their lives and give them hope.
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I think after a time there won't be anything left to be interesting for mankind. Computers are about to do everything for us. Cellphones are smarter than we are. We'll embrace spirituality because we'll be bored of everything else.
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Remember that life's big changes rarely give advance warning.
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The thing about Precious, she's so far from a Hollywood character. She's so honest and real, I definitely felt like I knew her.
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It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?
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The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
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Conservatives were sure that if you eliminated welfare for single moms, it would eliminate - or at lease greatly reduce - single motherhood. So in 1996 we had welfare reform. Did not change the trend in the least. Soon half of all babies will be born out of wedlock.
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Thinking fragments reality - it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.
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When I finally finished the 'Two Suns' tour, which went on for quite a long time, I felt like a bit of a husk. And I remember thinking, 'I need to spend some time in one place, and just be at home.' So I guess the first year of that three and a half years was spent just trying to kind of get back to normal again.
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Mainly, I hope to inspire honesty. We live in a space where so much can be manipulated, and so much is expected to be manipulated - curated, contrived, edited. I think that's a real detriment to self expression and happiness in a lot of ways. In my mind, honesty and vulnerability is the way forward.
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I was raised in the Baptist church... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.
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Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
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A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.
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One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it.
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The rise of the Internet and the camera phone have started to change what stories are accessible.
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I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.
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I say it with my tongue firmly planted in cheek but there's truth to it - being a comedian is very close to being a therapist. When you're working smaller clubs, you're listening. You're feeling an energy, you're going with a tone but when people start yelling out, you almost start a conversation with people.
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I grew up with horrible skin. I had cystic acne ever since I can remember. I ended up finally listening to those people who say you are what you eat.
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I'm measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I'm on track and where I think I'm off track.
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Our Founding Fathers who created this republic did not believe in democracy. When did we come to worship this idol?
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Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.
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Through the humbling dispensations of Divine Providence, men are sometimes fitted for his service.
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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. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.
