Quotes from Norman Lear

The movies had a slogan at the time, to distinguish themselves from TV, that said 'movies are better than ever.'

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.

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.

We all [Ed Simmons,Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis] started together, so there were no rules - anything we wrote became television.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In this nation, leadership is dollars.

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

I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.

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

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

It seems to me that any full grown, mature adult would have a desire to be responsible, to help where he can in a world that needs so very much, that threatens us so very much.

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

In this nation, leadership is dollars.

It seems to me that any full grown, mature adult would have a desire to be responsible, to help where he can in a world that needs so very much, that threatens us so very much.

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.

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.

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.

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.