Alan Alda Quotes
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You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don't see where they get the pigeons from, you don't really know how they're doing it.
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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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Kids are natural scientists.
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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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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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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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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 the audience was aware that even when it was farcical, there was the sense that at some level this was about real experience.
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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. I can sing in tune now, but I have to work really hard on it to make sure that I don't exercise one of my great talents, which is the ability to sing in three keys at the same time.
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I'm condemned by some inner compulsion to think about the daily rituals of my life. I have a low grade fever for improving myself in many ways, including everyday tasks.
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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.
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The thing is when you're... well-enough known, you get asked to speak places, and they don't really think about whether or not you're qualified. They just want somebody that will be a drawing card for the audience. So it's up to you to decide whether or not it's foolish to get up and speak to these people.
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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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When I started out as an actor, I thought, Here's what I have to say; how shall I say it? I began to understand that what I do in the scene is not as important as what happens between me and the other person. And listening is what lets it happen. It's almost always the other person who causes you to say what you say next. You don't have to figure out how you'll say it. You have to listen so simply, so innocently, that the other person brings about a change in you that makes you say it and informs the way you say it.
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Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.
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I've never tried to manipulate my image.
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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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My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six.
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I hated high school. It was a prison.
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If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.
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Loneliness is everything it's cracked up to be.
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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 have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.