As H.L. Mencken once said, 'nobody ever when broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.' Our show [All in the Family] countered that witticism. I think he was wrong.

When something is over, it is over.

We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.

It seems to me that any full grown, mature adult would have a desire to be responsible, to help where he can in a world that needs so very much, that threatens us so very much.

Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.

You know, you throw rocks in the lake and scientists will tell you you're raising the level of the lake, but all you get to see is the ripple.

Maybe they continued to agree with Archie Bunker - as I said earlier, you can't change people's minds, but you can get them to think.

Life is about having a good time.

That's the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.

In the area we're discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.

I like getting up in the morning, and I like better having something to do when I get up in the morning.

She turned and bolted out the door. She had learnt an important lesson - "When a man paid 'for' you...you paid 'to' him." It was her first Valentine slaughter.

But I didn't mind. I loved that everything was cataloged and ready to go and that I was technically now living and sleeping in a library.

The key is to get to know people and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

We have had enough, once and for all, of Hedonism--the gloomy philosophy which says that Pleasure is the only good.

If you pay too much attention to the criticism of the one who is inferior, then you must endure the constraints of the plane to which you have descended without feeling hurt.

Iraq and Afghanistan are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.

Public Opinion, this invisible, intangible, omnipresent, despotic tyrant; this thousand-headed Hydra - the more dangerous for being composed of individual mediocrities...

The problem's always been to deal with the fear.Cos the fear is pretty . . . it ruins everybody really.

There is a tide in the affairs of men