Alan Quotes

The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.

There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.

There is not in nature, a thing that makes man so deformed, so beastly, as doth intemperate anger.

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.

Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.

If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed

Quit planning your dream and start living it.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

You can lull the paying customers as long as they get slapped.

We start off confused and end up confused on a higher level.

This city is dying of rabies. Is the best I can do to wipe random flecks of foam from its lips?

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.

Im not supposed to be within two hundred feet of a school or a Chuck E. Cheese.

While a truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.

As the centuries unfold, millions of artists will live on the moon and paint the moon and Mars as we go out into the universe.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring.

I had to have a brace because I had big teeth. If I'd gone to Africa I would have got poached.

It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below?

It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.

Well madam, have you looked in the mirror and seen the state of your nose? Boxing is my excuse. What's yours?

Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.

If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.

A true leader helps people focus on their potential, not on their limitations.

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.

Reality includes both the past and the future, but existence includes only the present and is totally dependent on the reality of past and future universes. Without them there is no existence now.

Rights are not self-evident. They're not unalienable. They are subject to modification just like anything else.

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

By going out of your mind, you come to your senses

I think if you retire from touring, then people think you are retired.

I'm not good at precise, coherent argument. But plays are suited to incoherent argument, put into the mouths of fallible people.

Art comes out of art; it begins with imitation, often in the form of parody, and it's in the process of imitating the voice of others that one comes to learn the sound of one's own.

It's harder than you might think to squander millions of dollars, but a flawed software development process is a tool well suited to the job.

And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

Little girls are the nicest things that happen to people. They are born with a little bit of angelshine about them, and though it wears thin sometimes there is always enough left to lasso your heart.

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.

How can I ever hope to communicate something to you unless I get signals back from you that I'm on the right track or that I've started at some place that you're familiar with?