Norman Lear Quotes

36 quotes in 514 categories

• Success is how you collect your minutes. You spend millions of minutes to reach one triumph, one moment, then you spend maybe a thousand minutes…
• 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'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…
• 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.
• The American people may not be the best-educated, but they're very wise at heart.
• The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.
• There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.
• TV that people will never see, that giant international corporations will never touch, will never pay your salary.
• It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could…
• 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…
• Success is how you collect your minutes.
• I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.
• But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or…
• In this nation, leadership is dollars.
• 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…
• So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.
• But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down…
• 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…
• You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.
• If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana Leaf.

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