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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.

-Alan Alda

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I Dont See We

Alan Alda

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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.

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I Try To Find Out What There Is In The Character That In A Way, You Can't Put Into Words. If I Could Put It Into Words, Then It Wouldn't Be A Performance. And If I Do Put It Into Words, As I Play It, I Start To Get Boxed In By Those Words.

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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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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.

Artists Try To Say Things That Can't Be Said. In A Fragile Net Of Words, Gestures, Or Colors, We Hope To Capture A Feeling; A Taste; A Painful Longing. But The Net Is Always Too Porous, And We Are Left With The Sweet Frustration Of Almost Knowing, Which Is Teasingly Pleasurable.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Real Listening Is A Willingness To Let The Other Person Change You.

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.

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.

Awards Can Give You A Tremendous Amount Of Encouragement To Keep Getting Better, No Matter How Young Or Old You Are.

I Really Don't Like Plays Or Movies That Service Propaganda.

Originality Is Unexplored Territory. You Get There By Carrying A Canoe - You Can't Take A Taxi.

During The First Day, Curious At Having Outsiders Among Them, A Long Stream Of Inmates Came Over And Talked With Me. Remarkably, According To What They Told Me, Nearly Every Inmate In The Prison Didn't Do It. Several Thousand People Had Been Locked Up Unjustly And, By An Incredible Coincidence, All In The Same Prison. On The Other Hand, They Knew An Awful Lot About How To Knife Somebody.

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.

Kids Are Natural Scientists.

I Found I Wasn't Asking Good Enough Questions Because I Assumed I Knew Something.

It's Always Better To Be Wise Than To Be Smart.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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I've Played A Murderer, So Certainly I Think I Can Play A Republican.

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Figuring Things

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Here's My Golden Rule For A Tarnished Age: Be Fair With Others, But Keep After Them Until They're Fair With You.

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For Humans, Flying Isn't Magic, It's Physics.

Be Brave Enough To Live Creatively.

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Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

Listening Is Being Able To Be Changed By The Other Person.

I'll Carry On, Carry Over, Carry Forward, Cary Grant, Cash And Carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, I'll Even 'hari-kari' If You Show Me How, But I Will Not Carry A Gun!

Whenever You Wonder About Yourself, Look Up At The Stars Swirling Around In The Heavens And Just Realize How Tiny And Puny They Are. They're Supposed To Be Gigantic Explosions And They're Just These Insignificant Little Dots. If You Step Back From Things Far Enough You Realize How Important And Powerful You Are.

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.

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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Testosterone Poisoning: … Until Now It Has Been Thought That The Level Of Testosterone In Men Is Normal Simply Because They Have It. But If You Consider How Abnormal Their Behavior Is, Then You Are Led To The Hypothesis That Almost All Men Are Suffering From ‘testosterone Poisoning.’

Life Is Great-i Wouldn't Know What I'd Do Without It.

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.

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'm In This Wonderful Position Where I Can Do What Interests Me. And Whatever Comes Along That Interests Me, I Do. The Rest Of The Time I Bother Scientists About Communicating.

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.

When People Are Laughing, They're Generally Not Killing One Another.

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.

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.

There's Plenty Of Money To Be Had. But You Also Lose Your Soul.

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.

War Is War And Hell Is Hell, And If You Ask Me, War Is A Lot Worse.

I Wouldn't Live In California. All That Sun Makes You Sterile.

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