NORMAN LEAR 1922—-“ALL IN THE FAMILY”“The Jeffersons”
SUCCESS IS HOW YOU COLLECT YOUR MINUTES.
WE JUST MAY BE the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.
LIFE IS ABOUT HAVING A GOOD TIME.
I THINK AMERICA, unfortunately, collectively thinks of itself as the ‘chosen people.’ To my knowledge, there are no chosen people, we are all human beings.
I THINK if you’re feeling great about where you are, everything that led up to it had to be terrific.
I LIKE GETTING UP IN THE MORNING, and I like it better having something to do when I get up in the morning.
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.
POWER IS THE GOAL OF RELIGION IN GENERAL.
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.
I THINK AMERICAS have become a — much more a nation of consumers than citizens.
I NEVER MET who I really wanted to meet and that was Charlie Chaplin.
MY DAD CALLED ME MEAT HEAD DEAD FROM THE NECK UP.
I DON’T KNOW HOW you can look back with regret if you’re at a moment when everything seems fine.
AMERICA IS A COUNTRY OF EXCESS.
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE may not be the best-educated, but they’re very wise at heart.
WE HAVE MISTAKENLY GOTTEN INTO ONE FRACUS AFTER ANOTHER. Why we do that the United States has insisted on keeping up a string of enemies, and the wars associated with creating those enemies, I think it’s because we’re afraid to look in the mirror and understand who we are.
IN THIS NATION LEADERSHIP IS DOLLARS.
IN MY 90-PLUS YEARS, I HAVE LIVED A MULTITUDE OF LIVES.
I THINK SOMEHOW I got a sense of the foolishness of the human — my favorite phrase, the foolishness of the human condition.
I WANTED TO MEET BOB HOPE AND I GOT TO KNOW HIM PRETTY WELL.
ORIGINALLY, with all the shows, we were looking for belly laughs.
BOBBIE GENTRY 1942—-“ODE TO BILLY JOE”
EUPHEMISM IS A EUPHEMISM FOR LYING.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE 1940—“THE TIGERS DAUGHTER”
I AM A NATURALIZED U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
THE UNITED STATES exists as a sovereign nation. ‘America,’ in contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to live by, or as an ideal to reach.
I HAVE TRIED very hard as a novelist to say, ‘Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals.’
THROUGH MY FICTION, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not just as ‘The Other.’
I DON’T FEEL the depression the people who are always looking back to the ’50s, to ‘Father Knows Best’ feel. I can see the coming of another glorious era.
IN INDIA, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
NORMAN RALPH AUGUSTINE 1935—“AUGUSTINE’S LAWS”
SIMPLY STATED, it is sagacious to eschew obfuscation.
MOTIVATION WILL ALMOST ALWAYS BEAT MERE TALENT.
ONE of the most feared expressions in modern times is ‘The Computer is Down.’
A HUNGRY dog hunts best. A hungrier dog even better.
ACRONYMS and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent possible to make trivial ideas profound.
FOOLS RUSH IN WHERE INCUMBENTS FEAR TO TREAD.
THE OPTIMUM COMMITTEE HAS NO MEMBERS.
ONE CANNOT legislate problems out of existence. it has been tried.
IT’S EASY TO GET A LOAN UNLESS YOU NEED IT.
THERE ARE NO LAZY VETERAN LION TAMERS.
WHAT A GREAT DAY—-HAVE FUN!