Alan Alda

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself.

Here's my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they're fair with you.

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 found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something. I would box them into a corner with a badly formed question, and they didn't know how to get out of it. Now, I let them take me through it step by step, and I listen.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.

It's always better to be wise than to be smart.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

People who laugh together generally don't kill each other.

If two scientists are giving their papers at a symposium, and one of them is just naturally better at talking to the public or talking to a group of people, that scientist is liable to get more attention - in fact, I'm told that they do get more attention - than the one who's a little more stiff about it. Well, that's not good for science.

I've had many uncanny experiences. I think it's hard to be alive and not have them. But I don't know if I can decide what that means or what they are.

No matter how big the audience is going to be. I'm interested in doing things that are fun.

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.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

It's very important for us to see that science is done by people, not just brains but whole human beings, and sometimes at great cost.

I feel like every time a door is opened by science, suddenly there are a hundred doors that need to get opened. That's what makes it an everlasting, interesting experience to go through.

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn't go back.

I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.

On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters - words have to be used to express that, and I love that about theater.