Alan Alda

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

I have a strong preference for being alive.

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark ...
Read More

Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And ...
Read More

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants ...
Read More

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.

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

All I've ever tried to do is play real people.

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn't mean I think that you should.

Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work, otherwise, it doesn't ring true.

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

Anyone I know who's almost died has come out of it, at least for a while, looking at things differently.

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

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

Awards shows mainly publicize the people giving the awards.

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.

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

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.

Be fair with others, but then keep after them until they're fair with you.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in while, or the light won't come in.

Blind dates are treacherous. You don't know who this person is. You wonder, 'Should I call my grandma during coffee to get out of this?'

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.

Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.

I don't watch that much TV, so I can't compare one show to another. When I watch television, I watch people talking to one another usually or a science show where they show me microbes, you know. Microbes actually communicate quite a bit, and so there's a lot of talking going on.

I don't really worry about the size of the part much any more. It's nice to have more time to work on the character, and to have big scenes to play. But if there's something playable there, and if it's interesting to do, then that's nice.

I always loved Sid Caesar and all the people on his program.

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.

I feel like every time a door is opened by science, suddenly there are a hundred doors that need to get opened. That's what makes it an everlasting, interesting experience to go through.

I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.

I hated high school. It was a prison.

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.

I have a strong preference for being alive.

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.

I love oatmeal. To me, it's not boring. I agree that ordinary oatmeal is very boring, but not the steel-cut Irish kind - the kind that pops in your mouth when you bite into it in little glorious bursts like a sort of gummy champagne.

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

I love to watch how scientists' minds work.

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.

I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.

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.

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

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

I would like to know that when I read the paper in the morning, it's telling me something that actually happened, and I think the vast majority of journalists want the same thing.

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.

If scientists could communicate more in their own voices - in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary - would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better understood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists?

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.

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'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.

I'm most at home on the stage.

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.

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

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'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.

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.

It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

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.

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.

I've been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity. All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you're not expecting it.

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.

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?

I've sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment, I've helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes, I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

Kids are natural scientists.

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.

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.

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.

M*A*S*H' was a collection of people, in front of and behind the cameras, that really clicked.

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.

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.

My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.

'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.

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.

No matter how big the audience is going to be. I'm interested in doing things that are fun.

No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it.

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

Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries.

The meaning of life is life.

The hardest thing for me about making movies, and that included 'M*A*S*H' because it was made like a movie, was starting and stopping.

The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.

The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment.

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.

To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can't forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you're under a certain amount of pressure.

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.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

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.

What heartens me is to see '30 Rock' on the air. It makes me laugh from my gut, which I really like to do.

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?

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.

What is beauty, anyway? It's more than something pleasant looking. If it doesn't stop us in our tracks and make us unable to move for a moment, unable to put into words what's closing off the breath in our throats, then maybe it's pretty, but it probably isn't beauty.

When does she do all this thinking? We're together all the time but she thinks deeply about things and with feeling and she can remember the facts. We've been married 48 years.

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

When I am at a dinner table, I love to ask everybody, 'How long do you think our species might last?' I've read that the average age of a species, of any species, is about two million years. Is it possible we can have an average life span as a species? And do you picture us two million years more or a million and a half years, or 5,000?

When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you're interested in the arts, you can't be interested in science.

When I was about ten years old, I gave my teacher an April Fool's sandwich, which had a dead goldfish in it.

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.

Whenever I think of how much pleasure I have interviewing scientists, I remember that they're having the real fun in actually being able to do the science.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.