One irreducible residual of 38 years in the business is the number of lasting, loving friendships I have made.

Sheer flattery got me into the theater. Flattery always works with me, particularly the flattery of women.

Both my brothers became physicians and I, of course, wandered into a business where the undisciplined are welcome.

I have heard show business characterized as a refuge for childlike persons in flight from all things harsh and real.

Nations have come under the control of haters and fools.

Talent can be developed, gift is God-given. But artists have both.

Those offers come in now and again. They're not knocking down my door. I'm only an old character actor, and I'm not needed.

Half the pictures directed by men of reputation fail.

One irreducible residual of 38 years in the business is the number of lasting, loving friendships I have made.

In a capitalist society, persons who create capital, like Michael Eisner, are given the staggering rewards.

It seems that entertainment is what most excites us and what we value above everything else.

My Irish derivation has nothing to do with me. Why should it?

Conventional show-biz savvy held that Americans hated to be the objects of satire.

Vulgar and obscene, the papers run rumors daily about people in show business, tales of wicked ways and witless affairs.

My professional life in Hollywood has been filled with joy and laughter.

The wages of pedantry is pain.

I'm lucky. Lord, I'm lucky.

Not all celebrities are dunces.

I enjoyed in every way my 12 years of playing Archie, and I wasn't personally sad about finishing a long job.

I hate pride, but if I were going to be proud of anything it would have to be something I'd done myself. Race pride is kind of stupid.

Millions of people thought Archie was a happy hero.

The reviewer is a singularly detested enemy because he is, unlike the hapless artist, invulnerable.

All in the Family was intellectual; it was art.

It was a lack of system that made the '30s Depression as inevitable as all others previously suffered.

We don't really need reviewers, just first-night reporters who will tell us faithfully whether or not the audience liked the show.

I've run into some S.O.B. directors, but I gave them back as good as I got.

I do talk less now because the sound of my voice saying over and over the things I said years ago embarrasses and depresses me. Why do I say the same things over and over?

Even a true artist does not always produce art.

Some people thought we were presenting Archie as a false character. President Nixon thought we were making a fool out of a good man.

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

The surest way to return to the people's business is to listen to the people themselves: We need to drop this whole scheme of federally controlled health care, start over, and work together on real reforms at the state level that will contain costs and won't leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

You have to be a star to be in this business.