The wages of pedantry is pain.

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.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Imitation is the sincerest form of pain.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.

Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there's no culture of complaint.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes.