Quotes by Alan Alda

About Alan Alda:

Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his starring roles as Captain Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing, and his supporting role in the 2004 film The Aviator as U.S. Senator Owen Brewster, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Stony Brook University and a founder and member of the advisory board of the university's Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and the Future of Life Institute. He serves on the board of the World Science Festival and is a judge for Math-O-Vision.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.

Alan Alda

I'm most at home on the stage.

Alan Alda

The whole question of fiduciary responsibility is a very old concept. You could make a movie about someone making that rule at any point in history, and within a few months, it will turn out to be timely.

Alan Alda

I fix my grandchildren's computers.

Alan Alda

I read science, because to me, that's extremely exciting. It's like a great detective story, and it's happening right in front of us.

Alan Alda

A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I've seen actors do that. But often it's a mechanical transformation, which isn't as interesting, and you've got to be careful how you go about something like that, I thi...

Alan Alda

Musicals are hard for me because I got thrown out of the glee club in high school, because I couldn't sing in tune at the time. I can sing in tune now, but I have to work really hard on it to make sure that I don't exercise one of my great talents, w...

Alan Alda

It's very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.

Alan Alda

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

Alan Alda

I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.

Alan Alda

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.

Alan Alda

I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don't strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.

Alan Alda

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

Alan Alda

It's not an epitaph. I felt I could look back at my life and get a good story out of it. It's a picture of somebody trying to figure things out. I'm not trying to create some impression about myself. That doesn't interest me.

Alan Alda

If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more atte...

Alan Alda

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

Alan Alda

It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich.

Alan Alda

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 pe...

Alan Alda

I had never really wanted to be famous. Everyone is supposed to want to be rich and famous, but as a boy I never knew what rich was, and the first view I had of famous made me leery.

Alan Alda

If scientists can't communicate with the public, with policy makers, with one another, the future is going to be held back. We're not going to have the future that we could have.

Alan Alda

It's a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.

Alan Alda

Author Bio

  • NameAlan Alda
  • DescriptionActor and United States Army officer
  • BornJanuary 28, 1936
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionActor; Television Actor; Film Actor; Film Director; Screenwriter; Writer
  • AwardsDirectors Guild Of America Award