Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alan Alda Books
Alan Alda

Alan Alda Books

Actor

Related Quotes

“I didn't know it, but what I was really looking for was compassion. Not consciously of course. I didn't consciously want to become compassionate. Who in his right mind would give up his place at the center of the universe? Compassion is scary. If you open up too much to people, they have power over you and make you i things for them. Better to keep them at a distance ...”

CompassionCommunicationPerforming
Book:Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
Create image

“You're going to learn if something's bad. It's not like you're going to say, 'Well, that lion was really unpleasant. I think maybe I'll come back here and see if I like it the next time.”

UnderstandingLearningEmotionsInstinctMemoryInstincts
Book:If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating
Create image

“Until I was twenty I was sure there was a being who could see everything I did and who didn't like most of it. He seemed to care about minute aspects of my life, like on what day of the week I ate a piece of meat. And yet, he let earthquakes and mudslides take out whole communities, apparently ignoring the saints among them who ate their meat on the assigned days. Eventually, I realized that I didn't believe there was such a being. It didn't seem reasonable. And I assumed that I was an atheist. As I understood the word, it meant that I was someone who didn't believe in a God; I was without a God. I didn't broadcast this in public because I noticed that people who do believe in a god get upset to hear that others don't. (Why this is so is one of the most pressing of human questions, and I wish a few of the bright people in this conversation would try to answer it through research.) But, slowly I realized that in the popular mind the word atheist was coming to mean something more - a statement that there couldn't be a God. God was, in this formulation, not possible, and this was something that could be proved. But I had been changed by eleven years of interviewing six or seven hundred scientists around the world on the television program Scientific American Frontiers. And that change was reflected in how I would now identify myself. The most striking thing about the scientists I met was their complete dedication to evidence. It reminded me of the wonderfully plainspoken words of Richard Feynman who felt it was better not to know than to know something that was wrong.”

AtheismEvidenceAtheistRealizationScientistsRichard FeynmanFeynman
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognize their names and faces but know nothing else about them? Why do we care what they think, what they wear, what they eat?”

PeopleThinkingKnowsI CanFactsBodyCareFacesNamesVirtueOrdinaryCuriosityLipsTargetOrdinary PeopleFascination
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are. They're supposed to be gigantic explosions and they're just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.”

IfsLooksLittlesImportantEnoughHeavenStarsRealizingPowerfulWonderStepsTinySupposed To BeLook UpAbout YourselfInsignificantExplosionsDots
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while or the light won't come in. If you challenge your own, you won't be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You'll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.”

PeopleIfsWorldSoulHandsLightAsksChallengesBrainAcceptingWindowPrejudiceCaughtYour SoulAssumptionOver YouBiasCaught Up
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“When I started out as an actor, I thought, Here's what I have to say; how shall I say it? I began to understand that what I do in the scene is not as important as what happens between me and the other person. And listening is what lets it happen. It's almost always the other person who causes you to say what you say next. You don't have to figure out how you'll say it. You have to listen so simply, so innocently, that the other person brings about a change in you that makes you say it and informs the way you say it.”

WayPersonsImportantHappensNextActorsCausesFiguresListeningScene
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.”

ThinkingWayPersonsRealHappensFoundDifferencesInterestingAliveWillingListeningEnormousRadicalPairsWillingnessPretendingWay Of ThinkingFluidMonologuesDueling
Author:Alan Alda
Create image

“During the first day, curious at having outsiders among them, a long stream of inmates came over and talked with me. Remarkably, according to what they told me, nearly every inmate in the prison didn't do it. Several thousand people had been locked up unjustly and, by an incredible coincidence, all in the same prison. On the other hand, they knew an awful lot about how to knife somebody.”

PeopleFirstsLongHandsThousandPrisonIncrediblesCuriousAwfulStreamsKnivesLockedOutsidersCoincidenceLocked UpInmates
Author:Alan Alda
Create image