Quotes by Norman Lear

“Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you dont collect all these tiny successes, the big ones dont really mean anything.”

“Edith, stifle yourself!”

“I know a lot of white people who have a lot more money than I do.”

“Its a happy coincidence that when we bought the Fantasy catalog we were also able to sign one of the most relevant and talented singer-songwriters of our generation. Were all enormous fans of his music. Hes a big hero here.”

“It looks a little nutty. Its hard to believe people pay any attention to it.”

“It will belong to the American people,”

“All in the Family,”

“Carroll OConnor as Archie Bunker was a genius at work, Gods gift to the world. He is etched permanently in our memories.”

“There is excess violence, excess sensationalism, excess sex. We are looking at an excessive culture, and to see the excess only in Hollywood is a mistake that lifts a branch to block out the entire forest. The endemic problem is the excess that flows from the corporate need to deliver a profit statement this quarter larger than the last at the expense of every other value. You see that clearly in Hollywood.”

“This isnt the best time for America laughing at ourselves. I think political satire thrives much more at a time when were in a mood to laugh at ourselves. The degree of political correctness has just gotten terrible.”

But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. Theyre all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.

Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you dont collect all these tiny successes, the big ones dont really mean anything.

Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case.

In the area were discussing, leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.

In this nation, leadership is dollars.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

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 a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was thats not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.