Alan Alda

It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy, it’s only necessary to be rich.

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing, but what you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.

We now know that anything which is economically right is also morally right. There can be no conflict between good economics and good morals.

Anytime I want to feel closer to the ocean, I just lay by your side and listen to the waves ebb and swell in every breath you give and take, and feel each one crash inside of me. I knew from the first time I saw you that whoever said empty shells carried the ocean’s songs had never met you before.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.

A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

One day I will kiss you, kiss you with lips that understand, kiss you with lips that can better explain, that can speak in so many languages. They will know how to say I love you in ways you have never heard, in ways that sound unlike anything any other man has mouthed before, false promises and fairy tales they did not ever believe in. One day I will kiss you, pressed words between your lips. I will kiss you and they will rattle between your teeth, run down your throat, and fill your lungs. They will echo against your ribs, they will reverberate through your limbs, they will dress every corner you’ve kept sadness hidden away until all that grows inside of you is the understanding that you are enough. One day I will tell you all about my paper napkin theories, algorithms I formed that demonstrate how the sum of all that you are, is greater than infinity, but to me you have always been the one.

You get what you ask for in this life. If you ask for nothing, you get nothing.

Listen to the birds and don’t hate nobody.

For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied – whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of.

Life is a full-contact sport, and there’s a score up on the board.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.