Alan Alda Quotes

Alan Alda serves blunt, humorous takes on hypocrisy, growth and morality that feel like a candid chat with a wise friend.

16 quotes

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

2. My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six.

3. Don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Laugh at yourself, but don't doubt yourself.

4. ... life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; ... it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

5. On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters - words have to be used to express that, and I love that about theater.

6. We need to be more conversant with it because science is in our lives. It's in everything. It's in the food we eat. It's in the air we breathe. It's everywhere.

7. 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.

8. 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.

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

10. It's always better to be wise than to be smart.

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

12. 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.

13. Be brave enough to live creatively.

14. It's better to be wise than to be smart.

15. 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.

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