Orson Bean Quotes

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Orson Bean

Profession : Actor

Birth : July 22, 1928

I am dedicated to giving my kids the memory of happy parents. So I spend a lot of time with them. We really know each other. If they should decide later on that they hate me, at least they'll know who they're hating.

Orson Bean

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.

Orson Bean

Until I read Neill's book, 'Summerhill,' I thought there were only two ways to bring up children, either with authoritarian discipline or with permissiveness. Either way, hopefully, applied with love. Now I know there is a third way: teaching a child self*regulation, not by coercion or by abandoning discipline, but by freedom with responsibility.

Orson Bean

Whatever else it was about, the feminist movement had no interest in exploding the myth of the mysterious and wonderful world of business; it simply wanted in on it.

Orson Bean

My wife and I sold our house New York and moved to Australia for a year; then we came back and spent almost three years bumming around the country in an old '61 VW van. We put the kids in school wherever we happened to be, but mainly we reveled in being rootless.

Orson Bean

I didn't use a voice change to do Bilbo. I have a distinctive voice anyway. I did an attitude change, making Bilbo kind of fussy - fussy and proper - then gradually dropped the fussiness and properness as the madness of battle really affects him.

Orson Bean

People shouldn't get into show business because they want to become stars or become rich; they should get into it because they can't help but put on a show.

Orson Bean

It's wrong to make a living off the theater. Theater should be supported, like redwood trees. You should make your living - whether you're a writer or an actor or a director - in movies or commercials. But you do theater out of love.

Orson Bean

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.

Orson Bean

I made up my mind I was going to walk that thin line between fame and oblivion.

Orson Bean

I felt only a conservative president could bring peace in Vietnam 'cause he wouldn't be accused of being soft on communism.

Orson Bean

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.

Orson Bean

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.

Orson Bean

For most of my life I didn't believe in God. Who had time?

Orson Bean

I didn't want to be famous for its own sake. I wanted to be famous so as to be happy.

Orson Bean

I don't know anyone who doesn't have an empty spot at the center of him, which must be filled in order to be really happy. That spot, like it or not, is reserved for God.

Orson Bean

I remember the glory days of film making. I used to go to the movies a lot.

Orson Bean

Cecil B. DeMille worshipped the almighty buck.

Orson Bean

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.

Orson Bean

What is it with me? I seem to be an incorrigible black-listee.

Orson Bean