Top 55 Alan Alda Quotes

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.

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

I think when you’re acting, you usually don’t have to know too much beyond how to pronounce the words you’re saying.

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

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.

I fix my grandchildren‘s computers.

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.

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

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

I don’t miss directing at all, and I don’t miss screenwriting either because somebody‘s always telling you to do something different.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My background is on the stage, so when I’d write movies, they’d be a lot like plays.

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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Kids are natural scientists.

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?’

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.

It’s very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I have a strong preference for being alive.