You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck.
For me, I was given a great gift by my father and my mother in that I was never told any idea was bad. I was told I could explore any thought as long as I wasn't hurting someone else.
I'm a great believer in our ability to come up with the ideas necessary to solve the big questions. I have less confidence that we'll be able to find a consensus about which ones are right without experiment.
Don may yawn at the idea, which he often does, but the great thing about Don, he has confidence in me and Mike and Ed and Leslie and Steve, that we're not going go out and do stories that will put people to sleep.
I was fresh out of drama school and had no idea what I was doing. They hustled me along and Bill Cosby tolerated my rookie behavior. It was great. Once you have 'The Cosby Show' on your resume, you can keep going.
When you're on TV and in people's houses - it's great that anybody watches anything you've done, but you feel as though you're being watched by Big Brother sometimes. Even if people have no idea who you are, you get the feeling you're being watched.
I watch children a great deal; their idea is that rules are always negotiable, whereas you absolutely cannot joke at the airport about your toothpaste, and you cannot rollerblade in Grand Central Station. I keep running up against these things.
I don't usually watch a lot of TV, but 'Mad Men' changed my perspective. I admire Matthew Weiner who came up with the idea and wrote such a great TV series, and the broadcasting company for being bold enough to air such a series.
If you look at the publishers I've worked with, generally, they're a great bunch. Creation is unlike any other publishing house you can think of. The people I've worked with have integrity and intelligence and, almost always, less money than ideas.
The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute.
I think students should know something about religion as a historical phenomenon, in the same way that they should know something about socialism and humanism and the other great ideas that have shaped political philosophies and therefore the course ...
It would be really great if someone would invent a new Internet with the specific purpose of not making money off of it, but making it what it originally was, a free marketplace of ideas, and there are still aspects of the Internet that are that. Wik...
Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don't know why this one is different, but it is. You don't know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can't stop thinking about it.
Being a talented artist is good, it's nice, but it's not the most important thing. I think being a good storyteller, having a good idea, a good gag, is probably more important than being a great artist.
Sometimes when I have an idea, and I say, 'Okay, let's - it will be great, maybe, if I sing in English, a couple of songs.' Now, the record company and everybody's like, 'No way, you have to sing in Spanish.' And that's, you know, really good for me.
I love to be creative and to put flesh onto the ideas that are inside of me. And there are not that many great programs that are coming out through Hollywood, and I'm tired of waiting around for someone to hand me a good script, so I'm going to go an...
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God Bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and paid forward for the next kid who comes along.
We have always tried to be guided by the basic idea that, in the discovery of knowledge, there is great entertainment - as, conversely, in all good entertainment, there is always some grain of wisdom, humanity, or enlightenment to be gained.
American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to t...
None of this excuses anyone from mastering the basic ideas and terminology of economics. The intelligent layman must expect also to encounter good economists who are difficult writers even though some of the best have been very good writers. He shoul...
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ ...