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

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.

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

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

The creative is the place where no one else have ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.

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

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....

If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to...

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.

At times 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.

Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition....

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.

I love technology.

I hated high school. It was a prison.

So that’s it. I’ve told you everything I know. Think clearly and think for yourself. Learn to use language to express those thoughts. Love somebody with all your heart. And with everyone, whether you love...

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.

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...

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.

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

ORIGINALITY is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe — you can’t take a taxi.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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?

How can I be so captured by my own imagination that I can truly connect both to the person I’m playing and to the person I’m playing with… I didn’t know it, but what I...

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

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

I love to watch how scientists’ minds work.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

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...

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...

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.

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

an electronic Mount Rushmore.

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

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

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...

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...

For humans, flying isn’t magic, it’s physics.

Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn’t like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like...

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

I must have interviewed 600 or 700 scientists all around the world.

I think the audience was aware that even when it was farcical, there was the sense that at some level this was about real experience.

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.

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.

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...

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.

[Alda concluded by invoking the words with which Jennings had closed his final broadcast in April, when he informed viewers of his illness.] Dear friend, … Thanks. And good night.