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I Still Don't Like The Word Agnostic. It's Too Fancy. I'm Simply Not A Believer. But, As Simple As This Notion Is, It Confuses Some People. Someone Wrote A Wikipedia Entry About Me, Identifying Me As An Atheist Because I'd Said In A Book I Wrote That I Wasn't A Believer. I Guess In A World Uncomfortable With Uncertainty, An Unbeliever Must Be An Atheist, And Possibly An Infidel. This Gets Us Back To That Most Pressing Of Human Questions: Why Do People Worry So Much About Other People's Holding Beliefs Other Than Their Own?

-Alan Alda

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I Still Don't Like

Alan Alda

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I Still Don't Like The Word Agnostic. It's Too Fancy. I'm Simply Not A Believer. But, As Simple As This Notion Is, It Confuses Some People. Someone Wrote A Wikipedia Entry About Me, Identifying Me As An Atheist Because I'd Said In A Book I Wrote That I Wasn't A Believer. I Guess In A World Uncomfortable With Uncertainty, An Unbeliever Must Be An Atheist, And Possibly An Infidel. This Gets Us Back To That Most Pressing Of Human Questions: Why Do People Worry So Much About Other People's Holding Beliefs Other Than Their Own?

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

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.

Working On The West Wing Was Similar In Many Ways To My Experience On M*a*s*h, Because You Had People Willing To Work Late At Night To Get It Just Right.

Kids Are Natural Scientists.

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 Very Interested In The Improvisation Because One Of The Things I Do Is To Help Train Scientists To Communicate In A Better Way And More Personal Way When They're Making A Presentation, And I Use Improvisation To Do 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?

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

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

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.

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.

The Good Thing About Being A Hypocrite Is That You Get To Keep Your Values.

Being A Hypocrite

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.

Our Lives Depend On Good Communication. Good Communication Helps Personal Relationships, It Helps Bosses And Employees Get Along Better. We Rely On It.

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.

Figuring Things

People Who Laugh Together Generally Don't Kill Each Other.

Positive Thinking

Positive Attitude

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.

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.

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.

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.

Being Mystified Is A Good Beginning, Because You Won't Do What You've Done Before.

Laugh At Yourself, But Don't Ever Aim Your Doubt At Yourself.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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 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.

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'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.

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

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.

When Your Kids Turn 13, An Alien Being Invades Their Bodies And Doesn't Leave Until They're 20.

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.

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.

I Still Don't Like The Word Agnostic. It's Too Fancy. I'm Simply Not A Believer. But, As Simple As This Notion Is, It Confuses Some People. Someone Wrote A Wikipedia Entry About Me, Identifying Me As An Atheist Because I'd Said In A Book I Wrote That I Wasn't A Believer. I Guess In A World Uncomfortable With Uncertainty, An Unbeliever Must Be An Atheist, And Possibly An Infidel. This Gets Us Back To That Most Pressing Of Human Questions: Why Do People Worry So Much About Other People's Holding Beliefs Other Than Their Own?

It Isn't Necessary To Be Rich And Famous To Be Happy. It's Only Necessary To Be Rich.

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.

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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.

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Insanity Is Just A State Of Mind.

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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.

Be Brave Enough To Live Creatively . . . What You'll Discover Will Be Wonderful: Yourself.

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.

As I Am Becoming Older, The Only Thing That Speeds Up Is Time.

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.

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.

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 Recognize Their Names And Faces But Know Nothing Else About Them? Why Do We Care What They Think, What They Wear, What They Eat?

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

How Can I Ever Hope To Communicate Something To You Unless I Get Signals Back From You That I'm On The Right Track Or That I've Started At Some Place That You're Familiar With?

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

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'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.

Really Top-notch Directors, I've Often Worked With Them Just To See How They Work.

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've Never Tried To Manipulate My Image.

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

Be As Smart As You Can, But Remember That It Is Always Better To Be Wise Than To Be Smart.

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.

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

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

Be Brave Enough To Live Life Creatively. The Creative Place Where No One Else Has Ever Been.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Loneliness Is Everything It's Cracked Up To Be.

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.

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