Alan Quotes

It is never right to injure anyone. It can never be right to make someone worse than he is.

Focus on the highest, clearest, and most meaningful teaching you can find, and let all else go.

The superman exists and he's American.

War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.

I'm at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.

Although it is pleasant to think about poison at any season, there is something special about Christmas, and I found myself grinning.

I'm the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN'T imaginary.

For everyone you create to be dependent on you, you are equally dependent on them. Neither relationship is healthy.

I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing.

I'm not a particularly dark individual. I have my moments, it's true, but I do have a sense of humor.

As I get older, my sense of humor is my biggest asset.

'Catch-22' was a huge failure, and it rubbed off on everybody connected to it. I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about.

No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.

I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

Eventually there are going to be cities in space.

I'm working myself to death.

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.

I really can't be bothered going to a barber. And shaving every morning, that's nightmarish. I spent my teenage years covered in tiny little bits of toilet paper.

Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.

It may be true that the only reason the comic book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise.

I'm remote from most technology to the point that I'm kind of Amish.

My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

Romantic poetry had its heyday when people like Lord Byron were kicking it large. But you try and make a living as a poet today, and you'll find it's very different!

I always feel that when I come to Edinburgh, in many ways I am coming home.

I've thought hard about my psychological connections and I think I've managed to separate out the psychological from the legal, moral, and political.

As a private lawyer, I could bill $750 an hour, but I don't.

I wouldn't pretend to tell you we don't pay our lawyers well.

I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.

When a woman has five cats, she doesn't have to be 'made crazy'

My credibility is zero. My wife claims she can go before any judge at any time and have me committed.

I've played a murderer, so certainly I think I can play a Republican.

I find myself going to places where I really have no business, speaking to these people in a whole other field that I have no extensive knowledge of. But I do it very often because it scares me.

When your kids turn 13, an alien being invades their bodies and doesn't leave until they're 20.

I was always interested in figuring things out. I'd do experiments, like combining things I found around the house to see what would happen if I put them together.

As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.

I'm in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

If you know what you're looking for, that's all you'll get - what's previously known. But when you're open to what's possible, you get something new - that's creativity.

I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

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

Really top-notch directors, I've often worked with them just to see how they work.

You wouldn't want to be called a sell-out by selling a product. Selling out was frowned on, whereas now you can major in it at business school.

Kids are natural scientists.

I wouldn't live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.

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.

Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.

For me, I find that even though I've accomplished a few things in my life, looking back on accomplishments doesn't give me a sense of satisfaction.

I'm greedy for that satisfaction of doing something hard and knowing that, even though I was afraid I couldn't do it, that somehow I can deliver.

We're highly social animals - I'm told by scientists that what makes us different from other animals is an acute social awareness, which is what has made us so successful.

Loneliness is everything it's cracked up to be.