The people responsible for the dollars that will buy the sex and violence so many deplore, don't even know what's going - well, of course they know. But they're comfortably ensconced in their country clubs and churches, and very far removed from the decisions that are made on their behalf.

Norman Lear

When something is over, it is over.

Norman Lear

over-it

Success is how you collect your minutes. You spend millions of minutes to reach one triumph, one moment, then you spend maybe a thousand minutes enjoying it. If you were unhappy through those millions of minutes, what good is the thousand minutes of triumph? It doesn't equate... Life is made of small pleasures. Good eye contact over the breakfast table with your wife. A moment of touching a friend. Happiness is made of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. If you don't have all those zillions of tiny successes, the big ones don't mean anything.

Norman Lear

happy happiness life

I wish I knew how we achieve the goal of world peace. My bumper sticker reads 'Just Another Version of You.' The sooner we agree that we're just other versions of each other - we human beings - the sooner we will find some sense of world peace.

Norman Lear

goal wish world

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.

Norman Lear

gratitude happiness life

We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.

Norman Lear

self may people

Life is about having a good time.

Norman Lear

having-a-good-time good-times life-is

You know, you throw rocks in the lake and scientists will tell you you're raising the level of the lake, but all you get to see is the ripple.

Norman Lear

rocks levels lakes

I like getting up in the morning, and I like better having something to do when I get up in the morning.

Norman Lear

get-up morning

I think America, unfortunately, collectively thinks of itself as the 'chosen people.' To my knowledge, there are no chosen people, we are all human beings.

Norman Lear

america people thinking

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.

Norman Lear

making-a-difference change desire

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.

Norman Lear

heart people thinking

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.

Norman Lear

agreement people thinking

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.

Norman Lear

careers strong people

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.

Norman Lear

dad race kids

Success is how you collect your minutes.

Norman Lear

minutes success

If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana Leaf.

Norman Lear

would-be reason believe

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.

Norman Lear

males black father

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

Norman Lear

issues care people

That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

Norman Lear

average years thinking

My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.

Norman Lear

necks dad meat