Being happy is a revolutionary act; I think it spreads, like ripples in a pond.
Orson Bean
God is being siphoned out of the public arena. People don't even say God bless you when you sneeze anymore. I want to be able to lay a Merry Christmas on someone without its feeling like a political statement.
In '08, Barrack Obama was famously elected president. Even though I'd supported McCain and dreaded what I feared Barrack might do, I felt a surge of elation when the networks announced he'd won. I really hadn't thought the U.S. would go for an African-American for a decade or so.
I'd lived through World War II and hadn't been able to wait to join the army as soon as I turned 18.
One night in a club in Boston, I tried the name Roger Duck. No laughs. The next night, I tried Orson Bean, putting together a pompous first name and a silly second name. I got laughs, so I decided to keep it.
I think God loves to hear little kids laugh at fart jokes. He didn't just make sunsets and bluebirds, He made hot babes. And dirty old men like me. That's the modest message I've set out to tell the world: you don't have to be Ned Flanders to be a Christian.
Miracles aren't necessarily good for everyone. The parting of the Red Sea, great for the Jews, not so hot for the Egyptian soldiers.
When I was a kid, FDR on the radio said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' We should be afraid of fear, or at least of acting out of it.
Left-wingers and right-wingers come together when they become extreme enough. The Nazi Party was called National Socialism, very similar to Stalin's Communism, with the addition of 'the Fatherland.'
The movies saved my life. I grew up in the great depression, the only child of a pair of star crossed lovers. My father lost his job. My mother drank. They fought. The movies were my escape.
War was a way of life for Americans in the early forties. Heroism was expected.
The people who get bored and want to get out of a long-run aren't the people who actually like to act.
Each morning and night I get down on my knees and thank God for my life and ask Him to make me grateful all the time instead of just most of the time.
I remember the glory days of film making. I used to go to the movies a lot.
In New Jersey, judges have ruled that a same-sex couple or a single person applying to adopt must be given the same place in line as a married man and woman. I think that's bad for kids. This makes me homophobic? I'm in show business. Half the people in my life are gay.
Anything that's done correctly is easy.
Old people come up to me and say, 'Are you still alive? I used to watch you on 'To Tell The Truth' when I was a kid.'
I like to work. I like to go every night and play a part.
I did my teen-age years in World War II. War news was a constant. We kept the radio on in our house to hear Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from the rooftops of London, describing the blitz.
Back in the fifties (the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties) I did some writing for Mad Magazine, along with my friend Ernie Kovaks and a pair of comics named Bob and Ray.
A lot of people didn't know I was doing Broadway. They thought I was one of those guys who was famous for being famous. I was the one who sat next to Charles Nelson Reilly and said funny things.
I'm not a pessimist. I do believe that in some way we don't understand, God has a hand in things and it will all work out for America. Our money says In God We Trust. And we are the best country, aren't we?
Children can become self-reliant and self-disciplined by being free to do what they want to do.
I made up my mind I was going to walk that thin line between fame and oblivion.
I didn't want to be famous for its own sake. I wanted to be famous so as to be happy.
For most of my life I didn't believe in God. Who had time?
What I learned at home was despair and hopelessness. What I learned at the pictures was don't give up the ship, we have only begun to fight, it's always darkest before the dawn.
The only real benefit of being famous is being recognized by head waiters and getting good tables at restaurants. The rest is part ego trip and part inconvenience.
When I grew up, which was really in the 30s and the 40s, the movies were a moral guideline for me.
I paid a price for being on game shows and that was not being taken seriously. But so what? I did what I did and I was glad. But it's a strange form of immortality.
Well, I haven't done that many movies, but the best one was 'Being John Malkovich.'
I think people are afraid to be original.
The nineteen fifties was a time of tumultuous change.
One of the things I'm proudest of, one year on my refrigerator, I taped a Christmas card from the Republican National Committee and season's greetings from Gus Hall of the American Communist Party. They both stayed up their months and I'm proud of it.
You know when I was a kid, I hated every day I was in school, from the kindergarten right through to my last day of high school.
TV and film are always slipping in political messages, not ones designed to bring us together but to divide us.
I never thought that I couldn't do what I set out to do. It wasn't from arrogance; it was from ignorance.
I think it was a miracle that Trump got elected.
I don't expect to be another Walt Disney, but I do get a terrific bang out of being able to say things with pictures. Maybe that means something deep and profound about me - but I doubt it.
I had come to New York seeking my fortune after a few years of honing my craft as a stand-up on the road.
I knew people who were real Communists but never made it onto the blacklist and kept on working. There were also people reputed to be Communists who weren't.
Part of me is nonhuman and eccentric, which is what a hobbit is, and I don't mind being eccentric.
Possessions can possess you. Even a lawn can possess you. It makes you buy a garden hose. Which makes you water. Which cuts into time you might be happier spending some other way.
Back in the fifties I was the hot, young comic on CBS and a regular on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I was also starring in shows on Broadway and acting in dramatic programs on television. Those were the glory days of television. It was like theater. It was live. If an actor forgot a line, he improvised. There was an immediacy to it.
The reason I became a Christian is the same reason I became a conservative: I paid attention.
Even I get fan mail.
I adored my mother. She was beautiful, smart, sexy and funny.
I make more than a handsome living doing voices for commercials; I hear myself all day on the tube.
Every restaurant in the world is owned by a Greek.
What is it with me? I seem to be an incorrigible black-listee.
