Alan Alda Quotes
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There is a wonderful feeling of power when you're a director, but I don't think I need that, and I'm OK without it.
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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.
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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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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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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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My relationship with science is as someone who's curious and hungry to know, hungry to understand. So all I have to offer is my ignorance and my curiosity, which is a good combination, as long as they come together.
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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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I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don't strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.
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Nothing important was ever accomplished without chutzpah. Columbus had chutzpah. The signers of the Declaration of Independence had chutzpah. Don't ever aim doubt at yourself. Laugh at yourself, but don't doubt yourself.
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Being mystified is a good beginning, because you won't do what you've done before.
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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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Life is great-I wouldn't know what I'd do without it.
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Jean Paul Sartre says in "No Exit" that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.
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What's funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.
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I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.
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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 must have interviewed 600 or 700 scientists all around the world.
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Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
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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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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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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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Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.
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Loneliness is everything it's cracked up to be.
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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.