Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alan Aldais an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is widely known for his roles as Captain Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He has also appeared in many feature films, most notably in Crimes and Misdemeanorsas pretentious television producer Lester and in The Aviatoras U.S. Senator Owen Brewster, the latter of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth28 January 1936
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
No one can replace a unique person like Peter.
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
There's a vacancy now that no president can fill, no power on Earth can fill, ... Others will step in and fill in his shoes excellently. But no one can replace the unique presence that was Peter.
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.
Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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?
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.