Alan Alda Quotes
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You can't be aware of everything. You'd fall down the stairs if you were aware of every intricate thing involved in going down stairs.
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Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.
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It's better to be wise than to be smart.
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When I got recognized as a writer, when I got the Emmy, I was more excited than the Emmys I had gotten as an actor.
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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.
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Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You cannot get there by bus, only by hard work, risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful; yourself.
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I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.
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No matter how big the audience is going to be. I'm interested in doing things that are fun.
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Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.
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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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What then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?
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I don't miss directing at all, and I don't miss screenwriting either because somebody's always telling you to do something different.
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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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Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
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Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.
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Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.
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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. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?
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Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.
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My father sang well, and he was a handsome man. When he walked down the street, people sometimes mistook him for Cary Grant and asked for his autograph.
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The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
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I love the idea of being out there with little or no net.
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When I was about ten years old, I gave my teacher an April Fool's sandwich, which had a dead goldfish in it.
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I used to not want to die in any way but in my sleep when I was a young man. I'd like to die awake now, if possible, with people around me who love me.
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I was brought up as a Catholic, and I'm no longer a Catholic. 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.