Alan Alda Quotes

Real conversation can't happen if listening is just my waiting for you to finish talking.

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have.

For humans, flying isn't magic, it's physics.

Maybe God is the ultimate bully who teases us with life, then pulls it out of reach. Maybe there's nothing I can do but let life curl up and disappear like an old photograph.
Or maybe I can get it back. Maybe imagination gets it back. Perhaps play lets it breath again.

I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.

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.

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.

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.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

I think I look better in a suit than a loincloth. So that may define some of the parts I play.

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.

I've had many uncanny experiences. I think it's hard to be alive and not have them. But I don't know if I can decide what that means or what they are.

I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don't strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.

Their shocking conclusion was that very often extra knowledge is a disadvantage. At first it seems nonsensical that knowledge could be a burden, and even a curse. The problem, of course, is not in the knowledge itself. The problem is when you can't imagine what it's like not to have that knowledge. This is because people are, according to the economists, "unable to ignore the additional information they possess." There's something about having knowledge that makes it difficult to take the beginner's view, to be able to think the way you did before you had that knowledge. And unless you're aware that you actually know something the other person doesn't know, you can be at a disadvantage. When you forget you know more than they do, there're a tendency to undervalue your position.

I play tennis non-obsessively. I seem to beat people I play a lot or half the time, so I guess I gravitate to people who are as bad as I am.

If I can't get the girl, at least give me more money.

I have a strong preference for being alive.

There is no hidden meaning to life ... looking for one is our problem solving brain chasing its tail

Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.

Why would you give money to somebody whose work you don't understand?

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.

I love technology.

Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.

I had always wondered why people wanted to be rich and famous. If you could be rich and anonymous, that would be fun. To be famous and not rich, the way we were, was the least fun. It takes time and effort to be famous, and if they offer you fame without the money, don't take it. It's a scam.

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.

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart's writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.

After a while I started to think of that as an image of something that went a lot deeper than the dead dog, which is you can't bring back anything to life.

I dont see we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there: if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They wont all lie to you but a lot of them will. And itll be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes. So every day till the end of this campaign, Ill answer any question anyone has on government, but if you have a question on religion, please, go to church.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

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.

Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone - they just don't do it.

There's plenty of money to be had. But you also lose your soul.

I was what came to mind when there was blood on the floor.

In order to fight a war (probably the most extreme form of poor communication), unfamiliarity is the preferred state of mind.

Well into the series .. I had written a show in which Margaret Houlihan comes into my tent and she says: 'how dare you grate that thing before me?' .. where there is an athletic supporter, jockstrap .. the network said you cannot name it, you cannot show it, you cannot even see a piece of white cloth underwear that a man wears .. but every week for several years we have never been censored seeing ladies bras, panties, silk stockings .. I get hit in the face with these things .. I walk through cloth lines .. get tangled up with underwear but because it came in contact with women's erogenous zones it was ok, but not men's! .. really interesting! that was somehow filthy and degrading to do that! And that was after, when we didn't have much censorship over us!

I have thought about punching people out. Sometimes, I've thought, 'Why don't I just act on that impulse?' But then, I've never hit anybody in anger. Hey! I've never hit anybody for fun.

Awards shows mainly publicize the people giving the awards.

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.

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.

There are two things that I get a lot of pleasure from in my life, and that is, doing what I know how to do well - that really makes me happy. The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.

At times 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.

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.

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 recognise their names and faces but know almost nothing else about them?

We're highly social animals - I'm told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

I must have interviewed 600 or 700 scientists all around the world.

Paul Sills said "Reach into the dark and get the answer." That stuck with me. If you had the courage not to know the answer beforehand, it would come to you. If you could trust yourself *not knowing* was an exciting place to be.

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist.

As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.)

But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more - a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself.

The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of th

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

Insanity is just a state of mind.

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.

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.

For me, I find that even though I've accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn't give me a sense of satisfaction.

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.

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I'm responding with my whole self - unless, in fact, I'm willing to be changed by you - I'm probably not really listening. But if I do listen - openly, naïvely, and innocently - there's a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us.

Everybody's on their toes and focused on what we're about to do, and then there's this moment where you relax because you see that everybody is there to do the best that they can. Everyone opens up to one another right away. That's a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.

Be brave enough to live creatively.

I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it. Maybe things would have gone differently for me in some ways if I had.

If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.

Even when we think of empathy as a tool for good, it might not be a good idea to oversell its strengths, and we should remember that there will always be people who will use it against others for their own benefit.

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.

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.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.

Sometimes, being willing to see the other person means you have to be willing to let them see you.

The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

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.

I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.

Aristotle is often quoted as saying that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. That's true, but I don't think that's the whole story. After all, a dead cat has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don't win, I'll just wait until I'm nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.

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.

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.

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.

I've played a murderer, so certainly I think I can play a Republican.

I hope they'll pay attention not so much to the mechanical things, like a sudden change of pace in a talk or a sudden change in volume of their voice. I hope they'll pay attention, instead, to the fundamental source of that pacing and volume, which is the connection with the other person. That connection makes us respond like a leaf in the breeze to whatever is happening in the faces of those in front of us.

In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'

I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.

I made my first stage appearance when I was 6 months old.

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.

If another player creates a bump in the sculpture, you don't ignore it; you acknowledge the bump and build on it.
Communication doesn't take place because you tell somebody something. It takes place when you observe them closely and track their ability to follow you. Like making a sculpture out of space, communication is a group experience.

If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.

What's funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.

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.

I would come in armed with only curiosity, and my own natural ignorance. I was learning the value of bringing my ignorance to the surface... Ignorance was my ally, as long as it was backed up by curiosity. Ignorance without curiosity is not so good, but with curiosity, it was the clear water through which I could see the coins at the bottom of the fountain.

'Never Have Your Dog Stuffed' is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

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?

I wouldn't live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.

Anesthetized by youth, I missed it.

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.

Kids are natural scientists.

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

Backstage life is terrific training for an actor, seeing shows from the wings.

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.

The meaning of life is life.