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Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.

Alan Alda

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Alan Alda
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: January 28
Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Podcaster
Screenwriter
Television Actor
Television Director
Television Presenter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo
Ever
Unexplored
Territory
Aim
Laughter
Laugh
Laughing
Doubt

More quotes by Alan Alda

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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.
Alan Alda
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Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.
Alan Alda
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I play tennis non-obsessively. I seem to beat people I play a lot or half the time, so I guess I gravitate to people who are as bad as I am.
Alan Alda
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There's plenty of money to be had. But you also lose your soul.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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I've never tried to manipulate my image.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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If you don't listen deeply, the connection won't take place.... [You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you're listening to, where you're not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you're actually letting them have an effect on you if they can.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda
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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.
Alan Alda