Ed Asner quotes:

The free access to information is not a privilege, but a necessity for any free society. One of my favorite things to do as a young man was wander through the stacks of my hometown library. I'd just browse until I found something interesting. Libraries have definitely changed my life.

I got some news for you. One, there is no Jesus. Two, there is no God. Three, mind your own business and everything works out.

All capitalists should be like Warren Buffett, and he says he should be taxed more.

My first job was with an auto plant, Kansas City - they treated you like slaves. From there I went back to Chicago, worked in steel mills, drove a cab, stuff like that.

I was a newspaper editor in high school, and I truly thought of journalism as a career. I loved it.

Some of my earliest political feelings were based on the anti-Japanese bubblegum cards I got. There were also Spanish Civil War bubblegum cards. Awful.

Raising kids is part joy and part guerrilla warfare.

When I was working my way up, it seemed to me that only Westerns and 'Star Treks' or sci-fi movies could afford to get away with presenting the problems - like prejudice and desegregation, for instance - that we face in our everyday lives.

The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth.

There's never been a time in history, no matter what the public thinks, when actors have been paid more than they should be.

They're sheep. They like Bush enough to credit him with saving the nation after 9/11. Three thousand people get killed, and everybody thinks they're next on the list. The president comes along, and he's got his six-guns strapped on, and people think he's going to save them.

I can do lovers. I can do Sir Galahad types. I'm not going to limit myself in voice-overs to irascible old men.

I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.

I regard myself as a beautiful musical instrument, and my role is to contribute that instrument to scripts worthy of it.

I pray that this council, which will probably be too late to save Iraq, will do what it can, which will be immeasurably strong in what it does in trying to save our democracy.

I am not a method actor, though I studied for a year with Lee Strasburg.

They say making laws is like making sausages. You shouldn't watch. It's the same for acting, especially for the actor who works unconsciously.

Raising kids is part joy and part guerilla warfare.

There are genuinely sufficient resources in the world to ensure that no one, nowhere, at no time, should go hungry.

Never stand still. Only stand still enough to learn, and once you stop learning in that stance, move off. Always keep yourself engaged, in theater, in whatever job you can get. If you can't get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets. But be around actors because that is where you will primarily learn.

Where the work goes, I go. Wherever adulation occurs, that's where you'll find me.

Never thought acting was something you could make a living at. It wasn't until I was in college, and got a lead in a play, that I began to realize I might just be able to blunder into this profession.

I loved getting to Chagrin Falls, being by the falls; what a cute place it is.

It's like an athlete. He has a string of hot years, and then he fades into nothingness. The actor doesn't necessarily fade into nothingness. After his hot years, he fades into a different category.

We all moan and groan about the loss of the quality of life through the destruction of our ecology, and yet every one of us, in our own little comfortable ways, contributes daily to that destruction. It's time now to awaken in each one of us the respect and attention our beloved Mother deserves.

A lot of people don't want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama.

You don't work with Cloris Leachman, you experience her.

I will always have enough money to last the rest of my life...as long as I don't buy anything.

I also think that there is a strong streak of racism, and whenever we engage in foreign adventures. Our whole history in regime change has been of people of different color.

To tell you the truth, I hadn't seen any Pixar until I went to see 'Wall-E,' and I watched it and I was shocked to see how adult it was, with the setting in our lives, both present and future, and how they dealt with it... And then quite relieved to find that the one I was working on, 'Up,' how adult it was.

I loved journalism until the day my journalism teacher, a man I revered, came by my desk and said, 'Are you planning on going into journalism?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'I wouldn't.' I said, 'Well, why not?' He said, 'You can't make a living.'

As they used to say 'What if they gave a war and nobody came?' How worthwhile if they declared a day of peace and everybody came.

I'm not sought after. I never get enough work. It's the history of my career. There just isn't anything to turn down, let me put it that way.

To my knowledge, there is no blacklist. But there is a mindset, even among liberal producers, that says 'He may be difficult so let's avoid him.'

The treasure shouldn't do the hunting, and you're a treasure.

(on making the transition from the comedy "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970) to its dramatic spin-off series "Lou Grant" (1977) We were really worried about changing over from a three-camera half-hour comedy to a one-camera full-hour drama. The audience wasn't ready for the switch - even CBS billed us in their promos as a comedy. In fact, the whole thing was impossible. But we didn't know that.