The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.

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.

Nobody doubts my partisanship, but a lot of the activity is nonpartisan.

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

At great, great remove sit the head of General Electric, the head of News Corp, the head of Viacom, or the head of this giant international corporation that wants these ratings.

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.

TV that people will never see, that giant international corporations will never touch, will never pay your salary.

There was no real controversy with All In The Family. That came from the people on the business end.

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.

In the area we're 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.

Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.

I wanted to just do a one-act play for 26 minutes, with commercials at the beginning and end. For years, I couldn't get my way. They wanted to interrupt three times.

You're in the business - when you're a writer, producer, director - to get ratings.

So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.

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.

Granted, the writers, directors, producers, and that community make a great deal of money. But they might be choosing to do a whole lot of other things for the living they make.

When we went on the air, I didn't want to be interrupted for an act-one curtain.

The American people may not be the best-educated, but they're very wise at heart.

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.

The trafficking of sex and violence is comes after the demand for ratings.

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.

It crossed our minds early on that the more an audience cared - we were working before, on average, 240, live people. If you could get them caring - the more they cared, the harder they laughed.

I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.

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.

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

In this nation, leadership is dollars.

We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.

Even when they don't know who Nixon was, these shows will continue to play.

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.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

Sex is the most beautiful thing that can take place between a happily married man and his secretary.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.

I would rather take the role and work and make my own money and self respect than to have sex with someone who has a lot of money.

There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex.

The fact is that young people are going to have sex whether you like it or not.

I wasn't a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie.

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man.

Young kids are taking Viagra, ecstasy. They even want instant sex.

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.

Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.

I think sex is very interesting for most people, but I'm interested in sex as a way of communication, I'm not that interested in the fantasy version of a sex scene.

I have tried sex with both men and women. I found I liked it.

Sex and drugs were simply not discussed in our culture at that time.

War is a perversion of sex.

I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?