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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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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
Favorite
Conditions
Sense
Human
Foolishness
Humans
Phrase
Think
Phrases
Thinking
Condition
Somehow

More quotes by Norman Lear

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I was the laziest white kid my dad ever met.
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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'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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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
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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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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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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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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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I think that of most leaders in religion as power brokers. They give orders, in a sense, to an audience every week, and that's where the definition of God starts.
Norman Lear
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My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.
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
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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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Success is how you collect your minutes.
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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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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The complete control of one party over everything - I would, I think, feel the same way if it were [the Democrats in charge]. It's not the American way.
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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If there was a sense of - a bigger sense of responsibility in the various leadership positions in America, things would be not as grotesquely overly done as they are now.
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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You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
Norman Lear