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You know, you throw rocks in the lake and scientists will tell you you're raising the level of the lake, but all you get to see is the ripple.

Norman Lear

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Norman Lear
Age: 102
Born: 1922
Born: July 27
Actor
Businessperson
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Showrunner
Television Producer
Television Writer
New Haven
Connecticut
Norman Milton Lear
Level
Ripple
Levels
Lake
Tell
Raising
Lakes
Scientists
Throw
Scientist
Rocks

More quotes by Norman Lear

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I started by writing, with my partner Ed Simmons, a monologue for Danny Thomas, that he performed at Ciro's nightclub in Los Angeles.
Norman Lear
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I get a kick out of the fact that people will pick on the writers in California for being responsible for the content. The people seriously responsible for the content are the people who buy it.
Norman Lear
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In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.
Norman Lear
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When something is over, it is over.
Norman Lear
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Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.
Norman Lear
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I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.
Norman Lear
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It seems to me that any full grown, mature adult would have a desire to be responsible, to help where he can in a world that needs so very much, that threatens us so very much.
Norman Lear
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The people responsible for the dollars that will buy the sex and violence so many deplore, don't even know what's going - well, of course they know. But they're comfortably ensconced in their country clubs and churches, and very far removed from the decisions that are made on their behalf.
Norman Lear
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So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.
Norman Lear
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Life is about having a good time.
Norman Lear
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I think for television generally, the question that often arises is, Does television lead, or does it follow? You know, does it lead the conversation, or culture, or does it follow what's going on? And I think it does both.
Norman Lear
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I guess the story that best defines us [with Bud Yorkin] and our relationship goes back to the [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis show. The four stage managers on that show became major TV creators and directors - John Rich, Jack Smight, Arthur Penn and Bud Yorkin.
Norman Lear
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My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.
Norman Lear
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I think somehow I got a sense of the foolishness of the human - my favorite phrase, the foolishness of the human condition.
Norman Lear
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We had a Judeo-Christian ethic hanging around a couple thousand years that didn't help erase racism at all. So the notion of the little half-hour comedy changing things is something I think is silly.
Norman Lear
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I think what's dangerous is 24 hours a day, 335 channels, or whatever the hell there is. Too much is too much.
Norman Lear
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We mocked that concept ['movies are better than ever'] by doing a sketch that was about a theater trying to get one customer to come in...and that customer was Jerry Lewis. It generated so much controversy that Dean [Martin] and Jerry [Lewis] had to apologize in a full page ad in Variety.
Norman Lear
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In this nation, leadership is dollars.
Norman Lear
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I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.
Norman Lear
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The movies had a slogan at the time, to distinguish themselves from TV, that said 'movies are better than ever.'
Norman Lear