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I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

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
Nations
Become
Much
Think
Thinking
Consumers
Americans
Citizens
Nation

More quotes by Norman Lear

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Bud [Yorkin] was the kindest and dearest man, and one of the most talented directors there was.
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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My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.
Norman Lear
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The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.
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 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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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 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 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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So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.
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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When something is over, it is over.
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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Success is how you collect your minutes.
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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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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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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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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Culturally, I think 'All in the Family' was universal enough to have good timing at any time.
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