Latest Norman Lear Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I like getting up in the morning, and I like better having something to do when I get up in the morning.

  Norman Lear

  Morning, Get Up

• 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.

  Norman Lear

  California, People, Facts

• If there was a sense of - a bigger sense of responsibility in the various leadership positions in America, things would be not as grotesquely overly done as they are now.

  Norman Lear

  Responsibility, America, Would Be

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

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Citizens, Consumers

• I think what's dangerous is 24 hours a day, 335 channels, or whatever the hell there is. Too much is too much.

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Too Much, Hell

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

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Phrases, My Favorite

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

  Norman Lear

  Dad, Meat, Necks

• I was the laziest white kid my dad ever met.

  Norman Lear

  Dad, Kids, White

• I was writing for live television. And I said to myself, someday, soon as I can, I have got to do a situation comedy.

  Norman Lear

  Writing, Television, Comedy

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

  Norman Lear

  Years, Plus, Multitudes

• When I got married for the third time, and I had children from my other marriage there, that's what I said when it came time in the ceremony for me to say something. I said, "I'm grateful to everybody that participated, everybody that participated in my life that got me to this moment. And everything was dead-right because everything is right now."

  Norman Lear

  Children, Grateful, Married

  Source: www.avclub.com

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

  Norman Lear

  Regret, Looks, Moments

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I think if you're feeling great about where you are, everything that led up to it had to be terrific.

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Feelings, Feeling Great

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

  Norman Lear

  Party, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Life is about having a good time.

  Norman Lear

  Good Times, Life Is, Having A Good Time

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I looked at enough of American Idol in the first weeks, and they're all about humiliation. I listen to Rush Limbaugh because I find it so repulsive. There are people with a little less sophistication who watch a lot of it, because we allow things to appeal to our baser instincts. But at the same moment, give me a little choice, and I'll make a better decision, because I have that ability too. And so does everybody else.

  Norman Lear

  Idols, People, Giving

  Source: www.avclub.com

• That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Average, Years

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Ratings translate into corporations, corporations that need a profit statement this quarter that's larger than the last.

  Norman Lear

  Needs, Corporations, Lasts

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The people responsible for the dollars that will buy the sex and violence so many deplore, don't even know what's going - well, of course they know. But they're comfortably ensconced in their country clubs and churches, and very far removed from the decisions that are made on their behalf.

  Norman Lear

  Country, Sex, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• America is a country of excess.

  Norman Lear

  Country, America, Excess

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I think for television generally, the question that often arises is, "Does television lead, or does it follow?" You know, does it lead the conversation, or culture, or does it follow what's going on? And I think it does both.

  Norman Lear

  Thinking, Doe, Culture

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

  Norman Lear

  Lakes, Rocks, Levels

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

  Norman Lear

  Christian, Couple, Silly

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I wish I knew how we achieve the goal of world peace. My bumper sticker reads 'Just Another Version of You.' The sooner we agree that we're just other versions of each other - we human beings - the sooner we will find some sense of world peace.

  Norman Lear

  Goal, Wish, World

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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

  Norman Lear

  Wizards, Lions, Wanted

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com