Alan Alda Quotes
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I know there's a creative side to artists to - pardon me - there's a creative side to scientists already, but there may be an artistic side, too, waiting to break free.
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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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I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.
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My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.
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The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.
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No one can replace a unique person like Peter.
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As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.
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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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You wouldn't want to be called a sell-out by selling a product. Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.
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The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.
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I've played a murderer, so certainly I think I can play a Republican.
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My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six.
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The whole question of fiduciary responsibility is a very old concept. You could make a movie about someone making that rule at any point in history, and within a few months, it will turn out to be timely.
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Begin challenging your assumptions. Your assumptions are the windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile or the light won't come in.
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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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I think it's important for scientists to speak in their own voices and not just be mediated by journalists or others speaking for them.
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When I studied how to think in school, I was taught that the first rule of logic was that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. That last note, “in the same respect,” says a lot. As soon as you change the frame of reference, you’ve changed the truthiness of a once immutable fact.
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Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in. If you challenge your own, you won't be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You'll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.
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It's a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.
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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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I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time.
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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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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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Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone - they just don't do it.