Alan Quotes

Lately I've been listening to some classical music again, some jazz.

I probably won't be able to hear it until five years from now anyway. That's when I always hear my own music. It takes five years to sit down with it after not hearing it for a couple of years.

Every ship should have a cat.

The singing of sea shanties as working songs at sea is a lost art

Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.

For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.

No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary.

But the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker, of the ego trying to watch the mind without interfering.

We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.

You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.

I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.

What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.

Where does my fist go when I open up my hand? Where does my lap go when I stand up?

The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for.

Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration.

No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.

I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.

I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.

...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.

For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them – the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.

Religion is always falling apart.

Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

Cows scream louder than carrots.

These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.

Just as the ocean is waving so each one of us is a waving of the whole cosmos, the entire works, all there is.

That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.

... nets, grids, and other types of calculus.

The sense of wrong is simply failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.

Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.

Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.

Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.

But the Earth holds ghosts, even of entire nations.

In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture--and American culture has triumphed.

To teach kids that creationism explains something about the world is no different than teaching them that the earth is flat.

We're willing to move pretty far on this issue, we're much more tolerant than we used to be, but don't mix it up with religion and God.

Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.

Long live the elite rower's motto:'early to bed, early to rise, never meet the regular guys.'

MCP, maximum controled pressure. No tomorrow, no waiting, nothing beyond the moment. We seek the perfect balance-total abandon on the drive, total control on the recovery.

I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games.

You need flawless balance on the recovery. You need white hot focus and the concentration to row square blades cleanly for seven miles. Smooth water doesn't hurt either.

After hooking up the fuel line and pumping a little gasoline through the hose, I prepared for a workout on the 'coach's ergometer'.

Im a huge fan of The Odd Couple, yes, and any comparisons to Tony Randall and or Jack Lemmon are completely welcome. I kind of try to channel those guys, and then add my own neuroses, too.

I love telling stories, telling jokes, making people laugh. Ive got no plans to stop doing it.

I love comedy because I can laugh at myself. I dont take myself too seriously.

With classic sitcoms like MASH, the characters all drove each other crazy, and that's what you loved to see.

A fan once stopped me outside a theatre and gave me as a gift a signed photograph of Sir Laurence Olivier. It was strange, but nice, too.

I do have a chore schedule - in my mind. I dont tell anyone I have it, but its in my mind.