Alan Alda Quotes and Biography

We did not see him in person but we can really admire him. Alan Alda is one of the best actors that everyone knows the best. In the TV series M*A*S*H, for his roles as Captain Hawkeye Pierce, he is widely known. We also want to have a selfie with him and Natassia Malthe whenever we get a chance.

As you would imagine after watching Hawkeye he was as kind, so tall, thoughtful, and concerned. There is a large amount of top Alan Alda quotes that inspire you.

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.” – Alan Alda

• “Loneliness is everything it’s cracked up to be.” – Alan Alda

• “I’m very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they’re making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that.” – Alan Alda

• “When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing one another.” – Alan Alda

• “How can I ever hope to communicate something to you unless I get signals back from you that I’m on the right track or that I’ve started at some place that you’re familiar with?” – Alan Alda

• “Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.” – Alan Alda

• “For humans, flying isn’t magic, it’s physics.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.” – 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.” – Alan Alda

• “Originality is an unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe – you can’t take a taxi.” – Alan Alda

• “life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.” – Alan Alda

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• “Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe – you can’t take a taxi.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ve been lucky enough to live through all the things that are supposed to give meaning to our lives, like parenting, grandparenting, art, celebrity.” – Alan Alda

• “It’s better to be wise than to be smart.” – Alan Alda

• “Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are. They’re supposed to be gigantic explosions and they’re just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.”

• “All these things you expect meaning to come from, and sometimes it comes when you’re not expecting it.” – Alan Alda

• “Be brave enough to live creatively.” – Alan Alda

• “As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what’s personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn’t ring true.” – Alan Alda

• “It’s really clear to me that you can’t hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose a certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.” – Alan Alda

Alan Alda Quotes About Mindset

Alan is good at making effective plans, setting goals, and working out the best way to achieve them he has a well-developed business mindset. Alan has a good memory, and he is actually highly intelligent. He’s such a great guy and an intelligent actor. If you want to get some unique Alan Alda quotes about mindset then you can find them easily.

• “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.” – Alan Alda

• “I found I wasn’t asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.” – Alan Alda

• “Our lives depend on good communication. Good communication helps personal relationships, it helps bosses and employees get along better. We rely on it.” – Alan Alda

• 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. – Alan Alda

• “It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It’s only necessary to be rich.” – Alan Alda

• “Jean Paul Sartre says in “No Exit” that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.” – Alan Alda

• “Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.” – Alan Alda

• “Life is great-I wouldn’t know what I’d do without it.” – Alan Alda

• “No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.” – Alan Alda

• “The good thing about being a hypocrite is that you get to keep your values.” – Alan Alda

• “People who laugh together generally don’t kill each other.” – Alan Alda

• “Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.” – Alan Alda

• “Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.” – Alan Alda

• “In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it’s a way of experiencing the person that you’ve lost again.” – Alan Alda

• “Some of the greatest things, as I understand, they have come about by serendipity, the greatest discoveries” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “Awards can give you a tremendous amount of encouragement to keep getting better, no matter how young or old you are.” – Alan Alda

• “When your kids turn 13, an alien being invades their bodies and doesn’t leave until they’re 20.” – Alan Alda

• “If I can’t get the girl, at least give me more money.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.” – Alan Alda

• “As I am becoming older, the only thing that speeds up is time.” – Alan Alda

• “Insanity is just a state of mind.” – Alan Alda

• “I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn’t really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you’re trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.” – Alan Alda

• “Republicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone – they just don’t do it.” – Alan Alda

• “Really top-notch directors, I’ve often worked with them just to see how they work.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!” – Alan Alda

• “My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ve never tried to manipulate my image.” – Alan Alda

• “I’m most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.” – Alan Alda

• “I wouldn’t live in California. All that sun makes you sterile.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I have thought about punching people out. Sometimes, I’ve thought, ‘Why don’t I just act on that impulse?’ But then, I’ve never hit anybody in anger. Hey! I’ve never hit anybody for fun.” – Alan Alda

Inspirational Quotes of Alan Alda

Alda is fully confident and to overcome many setbacks masters the resilience. Thanks to his gift, he can be the life of the party for self-expression, and the center of attention. Alan’s talent for self-expression can be a great inspiration force in the world when used constructively, uplifting others, and bringing much success and happiness to him. However, Alan Alda by becoming a social butterfly could easily squander his talent. 

• “It’s too bad I’m not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “Here’s my Golden Rule for a tarnished age: Be fair with others, but keep after them until they’re fair with you.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “What then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ve sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I’ve helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup.” – Alan Alda

• “I’ve been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I’m nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don’t win, I’ll just wait until I’m nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I’m an angry person, angrier than most people would imagine, I get flashes of anger. What works for me is working out when it’s useful to use that anger.” – Alan Alda

• “I would like to know that when I read the paper in the morning, it’s telling me something that actually happened, and I think the vast majority of journalists want the same thing.” – Alan Alda

• “I don’t miss directing at all, and I don’t miss screenwriting either because somebody’s always telling you to do something different.” – Alan Alda

• “I must have interviewed 600 or 700 scientists all around the world.” – Alan Alda

• “When I got recognized as a writer, when I got the Emmy, I was more excited than the Emmys I had gotten as an actor.” – Alan Alda

• “I come armed with a really good ignorance. I don’t strive toward ignorance. I come by it naturally.” – Alan Alda

• “The idea that the brain is not fully formed until you are almost 30 years old has already been introduced, and the Supreme Court already has based two rulings on it.” – Alan Alda

• “I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it. Maybe things would have gone differently for me in some ways if I had.” – Alan Alda

• “We need to be more conversant with it because science is in our lives. It’s in everything. It’s in the food we eat. It’s in the air we breathe. It’s everywhere.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I’m always inventing something.” – Alan Alda

• “I think I look better in a suit than a loincloth. So that may define some of the parts I play.” – Alan Alda

• “My background is on the stage, so when I’d write movies, they’d be a lot like plays.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I read science, because to me, that’s extremely exciting. It’s like a great detective story, and it’s happening right in front of us.” – Alan Alda

• “I used to read science fiction a lot, and I still like science fiction when it is a model of how we really are and to see ourselves from another perspective.” – Alan Alda

• “The whole question of fiduciary responsibility is a very old concept. You could make a movie about someone making that rule at any point in history, and within a few months, it will turn out to be timely.” – Alan Alda

• “I love to watch how scientists’ minds work.” – Alan Alda

• “I really don’t like plays or movies that service propaganda.” – Alan Alda

• “Any play is hard to write, and plays are getting harder and harder to get on the stage.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “I know there’s a creative side to artists to – pardon me – there’s a creative side to scientists already, but there may be an artistic side, too, waiting to break free.” – Alan Alda

• “Achingly funny as it was, Larry Gelbart’s writing gave off sparks that turned a hard light on the way we are.” – Alan Alda

• “When I was in high school, I fell under the spell of that crazy idea that if you’re interested in the arts, you can’t be interested in science.” – Alan Alda

• “I always loved Sid Caesar and all the people on his program.” – Alan Alda

• “What heartens me is to see ’30 Rock’ on the air. It makes me laugh from my gut, which I really like to do.” – Alan Alda

• “No matter how big the audience is going to be. I’m interested in doing things that are fun.” – Alan Alda

• “What’s funny is that you can think you really value your life until you almost lose it.” – Alan Alda

• “I hated high school. It was a prison.” – Alan Alda

• “Awards shows mainly publicize the people giving the awards.” – Alan Alda

• “You can watch actors create their illusions, but if you don’t see where they get the pigeons from, you don’t really know how they’re doing it.” – Alan Alda

• “Why would you give money to somebody whose work you don’t understand?” – Alan Alda

• “I used to not want to die in any way but in my sleep when I was a young man. I’d like to die awake now, if possible, with people around me who love me.” – Alan Alda

• “Anyone I know who’s almost died has come out of it, at least for a while, looking at things differently.” – Alan Alda

• “All I’ve ever tried to do is play real people.” – Alan Alda

• “I made my first stage appearance when I was 6 months old.” – Alan Alda

• “You know what my earliest memories are? Going from one burlesque town to another. My father was in burlesque.” – Alan Alda

• “The President never intends to get into any kind of war situation. He gets carried away by events.” – Alan Alda

• “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.” – Alan Alda

• “And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn’t mean I think that you should.” – Alan Alda

• “No, I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it.” – Alan Alda

• “When does she do all this thinking? We’re together all the time but she thinks deeply about things and with feeling and she can remember the facts. We’ve been married 48 years.” – Alan Alda

• “It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn’t look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy – I mean Jimmy as the character.” – Alan Alda

• “I’m condemned by some inner compulsion to think about the daily rituals of my life. I have a low grade fever for improving myself in many ways, including everyday tasks.” – Alan Alda

• I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn’t used up being born the first time.” – Alan Alda

• “In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for ‘Scientific American Frontiers.” – Alan Alda

• “Almost everybody that’s well-known gets tagged with a nickname.” – Alan Alda

Also Read: Freaky Quotes, Gaslighting Quotes

Alan Alda Biography

Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo, better known as Alan Alda, is an award-winning actor, director, comedian, screenwriter, and author from the United States. He is also known as Alda. In his long career, he has starred in many movies, TV shows, and stage shows. Also, he has written and directed many of those projects, not just played the roles in them. He has also written a few books about his own life. He is best known for playing “Hawkeye Pierce” in the long-running TV show “M*A*S*H.” There are six “Emmy Awards,” seven “People’s Choice Awards,” six “Golden Globe Awards,” and three “Directors Guild of America” awards that he has won so far, and he has three more to go. 

He has also been nominated for two Tony Awards and one Academy Award. He has been in a lot of TV shows, game shows, and movies, including a few Woody Allen movies. His best movies are “Paper Lion,” “Same Time, Next Year,” “The Four Seasons,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” and “The Aviator.” He was also a part of the TV show “The West Wing.” He is also a political activist, and his political views are often shown in his work. He is a big supporter of women’s rights and does a lot of good things for other people.

Childhood

In 1936, Alan Alda was born in The Bronx, New York City, United States. He was the son of Robert and Joan Alda. His father was an actor, singer, and dancer. His mother was a former winner of a beauty pageant, and he was born to her. It turns out that he has a half-brother named Antony Alda, who is also a movie star. It was when Alan was a child that he went around the United States with his father when he was performing in theatre. Seven years ago, he got polio. It was very painful for him to go through months of treatment to get rid of the virus. 

His mother nursed him all the time during this time. Even though he was young, his mother started to show signs of mental illness. This wasn’t a thing people talked about in those days, and it was something people were ashamed of. That meant she didn’t get the treatment she needed. When the illness got so bad that she tried to stab his father, he divorced her. The high school where he went is called ‘Archbishop Stepinac High School’ in White Plains, New York. Later, he went to Fordham College in the Bronx and earned a degree in English in 1956. In this time, he took the ROTC officer training course and then went on a six-month tour of duty as a gunnery officer in South Korea.

Career

In his junior year at college, Alan Alda went to Europe for a study trip. He also did a play in Rome. He then did a TV show in Amsterdam with his father. His Broadway debut was in 1959, when he played “Telephone Man” in the play “Only in America.” During his time on Broadway, he made a few guest appearances on TV shows. To make his first movie, he reprised his role as “Charlie Cotchpiee” in the stage play “Purlie Victorious,” which became a movie in 1963. In 1964, he played Felix the “Owl” in the stage version of “The Owl and the Pussycat.” He was the star of the show. In 1966, he starred in a Broadway show called “The Apple Tree.” He was nominated for a “Tony Award” for “Best Actor.”

From 1965 to 1968, he played a game show on TV called “The Match Game.” In 1968, he played “George Plimpton” in the movie “Paper Lion.” ‘The Extraordinary Seaman’ came out the next year, and in 1971, he played the Mephisto Waltz in ‘The Mephisto Waltz.’ He played Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in the TV show “M*A*S*H,” which was a situational comedy set during the “Korean War,” from 1972 to 1983. It started out that Alda didn’t want to act in lighthearted war comedies at first, but she went on to star in 251 episodes of the show, as well as write and direct 32 episodes of the show.

His next move was to the big screen, where he starred in a number of movies, such as “Same Time, Next Year” (1978) and “The Four Seasons” (1989). He was nominated for “Golden Globes” for the first two films, and “Crimes and Misdemeanors” won him two “Best Supporting Actor” awards. From 1993 to 2005, he was the host of the TV show “Scientific American Frontiers.” He was humble and funny. It was about letting people know about new technology in science and medicine. Most of the time, he was in at least one movie each year. He starred in films like “Whispers in the Dark” (1992), “Flirting with Disaster” (1996), and “What Women Want” (2000). As time went on, he kept making guest appearances on TV shows. He was a regular on the political drama series “The West Wing” from 2004 to 2006. When Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for his film The Aviator in 2004, he was in it with Leonardo DiCaprio. 

Major Works

‘M*A*S*H’ is by far Alan Alda’s most popular movie or TV role. He played the sarcastic but good-hearted Army surgeon in the show. The show went on to become one of the most-watched shows in US TV history, with the last episode called “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” being the single most-watched episode of any American broadcast network TV show. If you didn’t know, he had a small part in the movie “The Aviator.” He showed off his acting skills when he played a conservative Maine Senator named “Owen Brewster” in the movie. He went on to get his first nomination for an Academy Award for the role he played.

Awards And Accomplishments

Alan Alda was nominated for 21 ‘Emmy’ awards for his work on the show ‘M*A*S*H’ as an actor, writer, and director. He won five of the 21 awards. He is the first person to win awards in three different categories for a TV show. This is how it works: He also won six “Golden Globe Awards” for his work on the show. Emmy Awards: In 2006, he won one more one for playing Arnold Vinick in “The West Wing.” This time, it was for playing a Republican senator and presidential candidate. A drama series category named “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series” gave him the award.

Personal History And Legacy

As he was still at Fordham College, Alan Alda met Arlene Weiss in 1956, when he was still there. Her and his friend had a party together. He met her there. A year after his graduation, Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice were born. They now have three daughters: Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. Even though both of his parents were very religious Catholics, he went on to become a non-believer. Atheists and agnostics are two words that are often used to describe him, but he doesn’t like them. In 2018, he told CBS’s “This Morning” that he had Parkinson’s disease, which he was diagnosed with in 2015.