Fred Allen

I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

I appreciate a lot in this life; the things you cannot buy. Life is only once. I am happy being here and all the things that are a risk I normally avoid.

We are entering an era when we shall create resources which shall be so constantly renewed that the only loss will be not to use them. There will be such a plenteous supply of heat, light and power, that it will be a sin not to use all we want. This era is coming now. And it is coming by way of Water.

Everyone faces the challenge of finding meaning to their suffering.

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

The people change, the common denominator is you.

Be ready to revise any system, scrap any method, abandon any theory, if the success of the job requires it.

There have been times when I’ve been around people I wouldn’t care to be around, and if I could get away I would. We have a word in Mississippi – we just don’t seem to set horses. In other words, this person is always saying something that gets your goat, y’understand? But when people treat you mean, you dislike them for that, but not because of their person, who they are. I was born and raised in a segregated society, but when I left there I had nobody I disliked other than the people that’d mistreated me, and that only lasted for as long as they were mistreating me.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

You’ve got to teach youngsters the difference between right and wrong, but you shouldn’t try to poke it down their throats. Let them ask the questions and then give them the answers.

I only ask to be free, the butterflies are free.

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.

No one can be helped unless he can be put in the way of helping himself.

If we were all just alike, one of us wouldn’t be necessary.