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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
Lakes
Scientists
Throw
Scientist
Rocks
Level
Ripple
Levels
Lake
Tell
Raising

More quotes by Norman Lear

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Success is how you collect your minutes.
Norman Lear
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It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.
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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There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.
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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Life is about having a good time.
Norman Lear
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'All in the Family' took ten weeks to take off in 1971, and we were lucky to start in January, because if it had started in the regular fall season of 1970, I don't know if we would have lasted. The ratings didn't take off until the end of that fall season, when the other two networks ran out of fresh shows.
Norman Lear
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But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.
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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I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.
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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We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.
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 two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.
Norman Lear
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I stop and look at traffic accidents. I won't hang around, but when I hear something is terrible, as bad as it is, I've gotta look at it.
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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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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Culturally, I think 'All in the Family' was universal enough to have good timing at any time.
Norman Lear
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Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.
Norman Lear
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I got a call from an agent to come to New York City, and write for the 'Ford Star Revue.' Because at the time there wasn't much 'national television'.
Norman Lear