Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Miracles aren't necessarily good for everyone. The parting of the Red Sea, great for the Jews, not so hot for the Egyptian soldiers.
When I was a kid, FDR on the radio said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' We should be afraid of fear, or at least of acting out of it.
Each morning and night I get down on my knees and thank God for my life and ask Him to make me grateful all the time instead of just most of the time.
People shouldn't get into show business because they want to become stars or become rich; they should get into it because they can't help but put on a show.
The only real benefit of being famous is being recognized by head waiters and getting good tables at restaurants. The rest is part ego trip and part inconvenience.
I paid a price for being on game shows and that was not being taken seriously. But so what? I did what I did and I was glad. But it's a strange form of immortality.
In the long period of time when I did talk shows and game shows, a whole new generation of people came along who thought of me as that, and not as a theater person.
Whatever else it was about, the feminist movement had no interest in exploding the myth of the mysterious and wonderful world of business; it simply wanted in on it.
I don't know anyone who doesn't have an empty spot at the center of him, which must be filled in order to be really happy. That spot, like it or not, is reserved for God.
If there should be one place where you should forget politics, forget whether you're liberal or conservative, whether you hate Trump or love him, it should be the ballgame.
I don't believe most kids enjoy school at all, and that's a shameful waste, considering how curious and excited kids are to learn. They're naturally curious, full of wonder.
What I learned at home was despair and hopelessness. What I learned at the pictures was don't give up the ship, we have only begun to fight, it's always darkest before the dawn.
Back in the fifties (the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties) I did some writing for Mad Magazine, along with my friend Ernie Kovaks and a pair of comics named Bob and Ray.
Possessions can possess you. Even a lawn can possess you. It makes you buy a garden hose. Which makes you water. Which cuts into time you might be happier spending some other way.
I did my teen-age years in World War II. War news was a constant. We kept the radio on in our house to hear Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from the rooftops of London, describing the blitz.
I don't expect to be another Walt Disney, but I do get a terrific bang out of being able to say things with pictures. Maybe that means something deep and profound about me - but I doubt it.
The movies saved my life. I grew up in the great depression, the only child of a pair of star crossed lovers. My father lost his job. My mother drank. They fought. The movies were my escape.
It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.
A lot of people didn't know I was doing Broadway. They thought I was one of those guys who was famous for being famous. I was the one who sat next to Charles Nelson Reilly and said funny things.
Left-wingers and right-wingers come together when they become extreme enough. The Nazi Party was called National Socialism, very similar to Stalin's Communism, with the addition of 'the Fatherland.'
One night in a club in Boston, I tried the name Roger Duck. No laughs. The next night, I tried Orson Bean, putting together a pompous first name and a silly second name. I got laughs, so I decided to keep it.
I grew up on Harvard Square and I watched 50-year old men walking around with green book bags slung over their shoulders going for their fourth PhD, never having left the world of academia to alleged reality.
God is being siphoned out of the public arena. People don't even say God bless you when you sneeze anymore. I want to be able to lay a Merry Christmas on someone without its feeling like a political statement.
I am dedicated to giving my kids the memory of happy parents. So I spend a lot of time with them. We really know each other. If they should decide later on that they hate me, at least they'll know who they're hating.
I was blacklisted and overnight my TV appearances dried up. Ed Sullivan called to cancel my appearance and said he'd help me when he could, and a year later he did. Only a few wackos wanted the blacklist. It was a protection racket.
It's wrong to make a living off the theater. Theater should be supported, like redwood trees. You should make your living - whether you're a writer or an actor or a director - in movies or commercials. But you do theater out of love.
I didn't use a voice change to do Bilbo. I have a distinctive voice anyway. I did an attitude change, making Bilbo kind of fussy - fussy and proper - then gradually dropped the fussiness and properness as the madness of battle really affects him.
One of the things I'm proudest of, one year on my refrigerator, I taped a Christmas card from the Republican National Committee and season's greetings from Gus Hall of the American Communist Party. They both stayed up their months and I'm proud of it.
I think God loves to hear little kids laugh at fart jokes. He didn't just make sunsets and bluebirds, He made hot babes. And dirty old men like me. That's the modest message I've set out to tell the world: you don't have to be Ned Flanders to be a Christian.
My wife and I sold our house New York and moved to Australia for a year; then we came back and spent almost three years bumming around the country in an old '61 VW van. We put the kids in school wherever we happened to be, but mainly we reveled in being rootless.
In New Jersey, judges have ruled that a same-sex couple or a single person applying to adopt must be given the same place in line as a married man and woman. I think that's bad for kids. This makes me homophobic? I'm in show business. Half the people in my life are gay.
In '08, Barrack Obama was famously elected president. Even though I'd supported McCain and dreaded what I feared Barrack might do, I felt a surge of elation when the networks announced he'd won. I really hadn't thought the U.S. would go for an African-American for a decade or so.
The TV show I do ['Dr Quinn'] is the day job that enables me to work with this theater [Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble]. That's all I live for. That's what I care about. There's no dough in it. Nothing to do but lose money. But it's all from the heart, and that's why it's so much fun.
I was living in a four-story Manhattan townhouse with three full-time servants and silver to be polished, and I was doing too much. My kids were growing up without me, and suddenly I thought, 'I want some other stuff.' So I stopped working instead of cutting back, and went to Australia instead of Vermont.
Young actors ask me for advice. They say, 'Should I get an agent?' I tell them, 'Don't worry about that. Act, act, act. Get into that production of 'The Three Sisters' in a church basement. Consider every audition a chance to act, even if it's just for three minutes. Just do it whenever and wherever you can.'
Back in the fifties I was the hot, young comic on CBS and a regular on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I was also starring in shows on Broadway and acting in dramatic programs on television. Those were the glory days of television. It was like theater. It was live. If an actor forgot a line, he improvised. There was an immediacy to it.
Until I read Neill's book, 'Summerhill,' I thought there were only two ways to bring up children, either with authoritarian discipline or with permissiveness. Either way, hopefully, applied with love. Now I know there is a third way: teaching a child self*regulation, not by coercion or by abandoning discipline, but by freedom with responsibility.