Norman Lear Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.

I think America, unfortunately, collectively thinks of itself as the 'chosen people.' To my knowledge, there are no chosen people, we are all human beings.

So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.

Success is how you collect your minutes.

If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana Leaf.

The American people may not be the best-educated, but they're very wise at heart.

We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.

I started by writing, with my partner Ed Simmons, a monologue for Danny Thomas, that he performed at Ciro's nightclub in Los Angeles.

Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.

It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.

I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

In this nation, leadership is dollars.

Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.

TV that people will never see, that giant international corporations will never touch, will never pay your salary.

Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.

I stop and look at traffic accidents. I won't hang around, but when I hear something is terrible, as bad as it is, I've gotta look at it.

When we went on the air, I didn't want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain.

We all [Ed Simmons,Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis] started together, so there were no rules - anything we wrote became television.

Ed Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.

Power is the goal of religion in general.

The complete control of one party over everything - I would, I think, feel the same way if it were [the Democrats in charge]. It's not the American way.

I think that of most leaders in religion as power brokers. They give orders, in a sense, to an audience every week, and that's where the definition of God starts.

We had a Judeo-Christian ethic hanging around a couple thousand years that didn't help erase racism at all. So the notion of the little half-hour comedy changing things is something I think is silly.

America is a country of excess.

Culturally, I think 'All in the Family' was universal enough to have good timing at any time.

I never met who I really wanted to meet, and that was Charlie Chaplin.

I get a kick out of the fact that people will pick on the writers in California for being responsible for the content. The people seriously responsible for the content are the people who buy it.

Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

In my 90-plus years, I have lived a multitude of lives.

My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.

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.

Archie Bunker used to call me 'the laziest white kid he'd ever met.'

You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.

When I countered that Archie Bunker didn't have to put down a race of people to say that, he replied, 'and you're the dumbest white kid I've ever met.'

I wanted to meet Bob Hope, and I got to know him pretty well.

I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.

Next up [new TV stars] was [Dean] Martin and [Jerry] Lewis on 'The Colgate Comedy Hour.'

I don't know how you can look back with regret if you're at a moment when everything seems fine.

I think somehow I got a sense of the foolishness of the human - my favorite phrase, the foolishness of the human condition.