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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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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
Done
Positions
Things
Various
Would
Bigger
Leadership
Position
Responsibility
Sense
Grotesquely
America
Overly

More quotes by 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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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 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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Culturally, I think 'All in the Family' was universal enough to have good timing at any time.
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So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.
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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We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.
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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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 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 wanted to meet Bob Hope, and I got to know him pretty well.
Norman Lear
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You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
Norman Lear
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But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.
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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Maybe they continued to agree with Archie Bunker - as I said earlier, you can't change people's minds, but you can get them to think.
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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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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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 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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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