Norman Lear Quotes & Sayings

“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.”

“Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.”

“Life goes on pretty much the same way. I've been working on a couple of films on the side. You may see some more. You may even see another television show.”

“We got ratings. It isn't that they won't quarrel with you, or say you're always right. But as long as you stay strong and the ratings are good and you're reasonable - I don't think we fought unreasonably. We basically won that right.”

“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 look at it.”

“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 that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.”

“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.”

“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 American people.”

“We did an episode on Good Times which came out of a newspaper article about the incidence of hypertension in black males being higher than whites, and increasing. So we did a show in which James, the father on Good Times, had hypertension.”