Steinberg Quotes & Sayings

Peer pressure is not a monolithic force that presses adolescents into the same mold ... Adolescents generally choose friend whose values, attitudes, tastes, and families are similar to their own. In short, good kids rarely go bad because of their friends. — Laurence Steinberg

Some theorists believe that polyphasic functioning can, over time, affect a person's sense of identity by making it harder to distinguish central concerns from peripheral ones. When life is made up of decisions, decisions, decisions, all requiring attention at the same time, where to eat lunch on a particular day may seem as important a question as, Do I believe in God? We can get to a point where the dailiness of life matters as much as the core elements of identity: one's fundamental beliefs, moral convictions, or close relationships. — Marlene Steinberg

There's never a benefit to bragging too much about a deal because the only sure thing is that I'm probably going to be dealing with that same general manager or that same person over and over again. — Leigh Steinberg

Mental Note #50: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, even though it most desperately wants to. - Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman — Alisa Steinberg

All across America public libraries were, and are, being shut down, while prisons-with libraries-were, and are, being built. This has been a choice the American public has been making for over thirty years. — Avi Steinberg

The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh. — David Steinberg

My father was a rabbi and had a little synagogue in Canada, so I'm from Canada. I left there at 16. — David Steinberg

Does man not face life with a greater assurance is he believes that a benevolent providence foresees the future? And yet he must at the same time be confident that his will is free, otherwise moral support is meaningless altogether. Doctrines in themselves are not important to me, but their consequences are. For example, I urge upon men that they regard themselves as embodiments of the divine essence. If I convince them, their days are endowed with a sense of abiding significance and unturning glory. Then not all the misfortunes and degradations to which they may be subjected can take from them their feelings of oneness with angels and stars. And as for our people, persecuted and dispersed, they live under the shadow of death, cherishing a dream that is recurrently shattered by the caprice of tyrants and then dreamed again half in despair. What can enable such a people to persist except a conviction of a special relationship to God? — Milton Steinberg

Very narrow areas of expertise can be very productive. Develop your own profile. Develop your own niche. — Leigh Steinberg

The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else. — Milton Steinberg

Pimps make the best librarians. — Avi Steinberg

All art is infested by other art. — Leo Steinberg

Harvard was a lovely assisted-living facility from which I'd emerged, like my classmates, stupider and more confident. — Avi Steinberg

It is wrong to draw a sharp line in one's imagination between the "nature" present on the Rocky Mountain front and that available in the suburbanite's own front yard. The natural world found on even the most perfect and stylized of lawns is no less real than that at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Different, yes, but to draw too sharp a distinction between the sparsely settled world of Alaska and the dense suburbs of Levittown is a prescription for the plundering of natural resources. It is easy to see how the yard, conceived as less natural and thus less important than the spotted owl, is easily ignored. The point is underscored by research showing that, surprisingly, people who evince concern for the environment are more likely to use chemicals on their yards than those who are less ecologically aware. — Ted Steinberg

And it was a huge emotional thing to leave the law and become unemployed - to be a student again. — David Steinberg

I starred in a Broadway play that was Sidney Poitier's first directing job and the cast was Lou Gossett, Cicely Tyson, Diana Ladd and I played a Jewish kid who offered himself as a slave to two Columbia University students as reparations. — David Steinberg

The thing about stand-ups is you can't really get good unless you're failing in front of a large number of people. That makes stand-up comedy unique: you need a tremendous amount of reserve within you to take the rejection from the audience, and without it, you can't do anything. — David Steinberg

Parents sometimes feel that if they don't criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn't make people wantto change; it makes them defensive. — Laurence Steinberg

Then the Angels came in 1961, and I fell in love with them. — Leigh Steinberg

Let your child be the teenager he or she wants to be, not the adolescent you were or wish you had been. — Laurence Steinberg

The artist is an educator of artists of the future who are able to understand and in the process of understanding perform unexpected - the best - evolutions. — Saul Steinberg

Everyone is fond of plucky children, kids who launch into adventures, even (within reason) kids who sass back. What about the girl who sits for a long time and watches other children going down the slide, whose legs quiver just from imagining how it will feel to stand at the top of that silver swoop into the unknown? — Janice Steinberg

When I talk to Steve Martin, he's joyful when he talks about comedy. — David Steinberg

We can always find creative ways to do things. — Leigh Steinberg

There are realities about what it is to be a woman in this world that are born from social convention. No matter how far away you are from civilization, you can't fully get away from that. — Jonathan E. Steinberg

There is a time lag between the activation of brain systems that excite our emotions and impulses and the maturation of brain systems that allow us to check these feelings and urgings - it's like driving a car with a sensitive gas pedal and bad brakes. — Laurence Steinberg

I used to have a theory actually that, if you've had a good childhood, a good marriage and a little bit of money in the bank, you're going to make a lousy comedian. — David Steinberg

At some point in the journey of being in it for yourself, you realize you need other people. Any good frontier story, in some respect, is about that. — Jonathan E. Steinberg

Stop," she shrieked, "stop trying to make it easier."

"But we do not love each other. We never have..."

"You mean," she screamed, "you have never loved me. — Milton Steinberg

Now we're getting a whole generation of kids who have never had a football team in L.A., so they don't miss it and don't ask for it. It becomes self-perpetuating. They don't know what they're missing. — Leigh Steinberg

We were the guys on the other side. It was hilarious. — David Steinberg

My influences were Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. — David Steinberg

Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson ... Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers. — Laurence Steinberg

Dean's wife, Judith Steinberg, made a rare appearance with Dean. She's a doctor, so I guess they brought her in to stop the hemorrhaging. — Jay Leno

A player cannot be part of the training camp experience as a rookie unless he is signed to a contract. — Leigh Steinberg

What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of therules and no involvement in decision-making ... Involving the adolescent in decisions doesn't mean that you are giving up your authority. It means acknowledging that the teenager is growing up and has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life. — Laurence Steinberg

You know, we don't look much alike, but Denzel Washington would make a great sports agent. — Leigh Steinberg

Do you remember, Meir, that epigram quoted in the name of Rabbi Johanan ben Zaccai: 'There is no truth unless there be a faith on which it may rest'? Ironically enough the only sure principle I have achieved is this which I have known almost all my life. And it is so. For all truths rest ultimately on some act of faith, geometry on axioms, the sciences on the assumptions of the objective existence and orderliness of the world of nature. In every realm one must lay down postulates or he shall have nothing at all. So with morality and religion. Faith and reason are not antagonists. On the contrary, salvation is through the commingling of the two, the former to establish first premises, the latter to purify them of confusion and to draw the fullness of their implications. It is not certainty which one acquires so, only plausibility, but that is the best we can hope for. — Milton Steinberg

Whatever fighting words you hear from the bargaining table, the reality is that with the new TV contract about to take effect and the incredibly lucrative ancillary revenue streams, both sides know we are on the verge of ushering in the most lucrative payday in the history of professional sports. The history of professional football is that nothing happens until the very last moment. — Leigh Steinberg

Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being a religio-cultural group in America, a nationality in Eastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation. — Milton Steinberg

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. — Saul Steinberg

Yet for quixotic reasons
namely, that I enjoyed writing obits
I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move. — Avi Steinberg

We're all negotiators. — Leigh Steinberg

As I write in my book, there is a misnomer that destroying another person's position is an effective and practical way to negotiate. — Leigh Steinberg

I have to say that it was a very strange experience when, later in life, I represented Byron Scott and was negotiating with West - whose picture I used to have over my bed! That took some getting used to. — Leigh Steinberg

There's a cover for every pot, but I've never seen so many mismatched pots and covers in all my life. - Ellen Wasserfeldman, from Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman by Alisa Dana Steinberg — Alisa Steinberg

When it came to football there was a certain age where I realized that my future in football was being a grease spot on the side of some bigger player. — Leigh Steinberg

every 'no' is one step closer to a 'yes'. And I know that greatness was never achieved by playing it safe. — Linda Steinberg

To improve chances of success, you want to build a project or product where you think you're filling a hole. Part of the trick is showing people things that they either a) haven't seen in a long time or b) things they haven't seen before. — Scott Steinberg

Great wine works wonders and is itself one — Edward Steinberg

Rose insisted on being taken to shore to fulfill her duty to her cause, but the lifeboat carrying her capsized in rough surf. She might have survived had she not been carrying $2,000 in gold for the Confederacy strapped beneath her clothing. The weight of the gold pulled her under and she drowned on October 1, 1864 — Jack Steinberg

Being a lawyer in New York sucks because you're working eighty, sometimes a hundred hours a week. — David Steinberg

Be open to the amazing changes which are occurring in the field that interest you. — Leigh Steinberg

We live in a niche world. — Leigh Steinberg

I ran track, and basically played every sport. — Leigh Steinberg

David Steinberg was the reason the Smothers Brothers got cancelled. — Dave Foley

I was so lucky that I didn't have anyone to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work until I was around thirty. — Shel Silverstein

Questions are fiction, and answers are anything from more fiction to science-fiction. — Saul Steinberg

Challenge yourself, its fine not to be a totally finished person. — Leigh Steinberg

When I started, you didn't make a lot of money by being a comedian. You didn't get a lot of respect. — David Steinberg

Now maybe that Arizona incident will make sense to you. I had to get out of that apartment, because if I had stayed in that situation I would have switched, and then all of you would've known the secret that I've kept for so, so long. — Marlene Steinberg

I rewrote it and I took all your notes. Read it again, that kind of persistence paid off. — David Steinberg

As for football in L.A., it's going to take a loooong time before another team comes here. — Leigh Steinberg

Comedians talk to other comedians the way jazz musicians can talk to each other. — David Steinberg

Adolescents sometimes say ... "My friends listen to me, but my parents only hear me talk." Often they are right. Familiarity breeds inattention. — Laurence Steinberg

I try to live in the moment, every moment. — Leigh Steinberg

That is the fantastic intolerable paradox of my life, that I have gone questing for what I possessed initially -- a belief to invest my days with dignity and meaning, a pattern of behavior through which man might most articulately express his devotion to his fellows. — Milton Steinberg

When I look at the Republicans, I am tempted to dismiss them as the Treason Party. Seriously, were a band of traitors to concoct a series of positions deliberately designed to weaken America, they would be hard pressed to beat the current GOP dogma - hobble education, starve the government by slashing taxes to the rich, kneecap attempts to jumpstart the economy by fixating on debt, invite corporations to dominate political discourse, balkanize the population by demonizing minorities and immigrants and let favored religions dictate social policy. — Neil Steinberg

He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. — Avi Steinberg

Many high-functioning multiples are gifted writers and artists, who, as they heal, are able to find an aesthetic outlet for the sealed-off rage and pain they have not allowed themselves to feel. — Marlene Steinberg

A spontaneous interview feels differently than anything else you see on television. — David Steinberg

It is in the nature of original contemporary art to present itself as a bad risk. And we the public ... should be proud of being in this predicament, because nothing else would seem to us quite true to life; and art, after all, is supposed to be a mirror of life. — Leo Steinberg

Fuck it, I thought. As Don Rumsfeld once said, You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. — Avi Steinberg

Well, my favorite sport as a kid was clearly baseball. — Leigh Steinberg

Then there were so many things to be said that they did not speak of any of them. — Milton Steinberg

The police and the vulnerable are natural allies. That they are so is counterintuitive and strange, for they also loathe one another. — Jonny Steinberg

One answer turned up in the violent video games the two were obsessed with playing. Graphic effects realistic enough to blur the line between fantasy and reality allow these kill-for-thrill games to be used to break down a person's aversion to killing. At the time of the massacre, Doom, the game favored by one of the mass murderers, was being adapted by the Marine Corps for its own training purposes. — Marlene Steinberg

I just knew that economics had never been my big motivation. — Leigh Steinberg

One of the things I find most mysterious in Picasso's work is what I would call the 'unlocation of place. — Leo Steinberg

Constable N stepped away from the car, into the darkness where Darren could not see where his gun was pointing, and fired two rounds into the air. The gunshots cracked the roof of the night sky and echoed back at us. My first thought was that they could be heard all over Toekomsrus; I wondered how many imaginations had in that instant conjured a different story to explain the gunshots; a record of all those stories, I found myself thinking, would probably document every fear this place has of itself and its young men. — Jonny Steinberg

I'd like to add that negotiating is not something to be avoided or feared - it's an everyday part of life. — Leigh Steinberg

In reality, we can prove that the incidents of drug, alcohol abuse and violence have dropped dramatically among professional athletes - but the problem is it would be impossible to convince than fans, because of what they read on the AP wire. — Leigh Steinberg

Early identification of patients who suffer from dissociative symptoms and disorders is essential for successful treatment, because these disorders do not resolve spontaneously. — Marlene Steinberg

I don't watch reality TV, my reality is tough enough. — Alisa Steinberg

Hey, our Founding Fathers wore long hair and powdered wigs - I don't see anybody trying to look like them today, either ... But we do look to them as role models. — Leigh Steinberg

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world's misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. All the right letters sitting on desks and dressers, slipped into purses, abandoned in email Draft folders, forever sealed and unsent. Shredded. Forgotten, sometimes intentionally. And the wrong letters, placed in someone else's hands - which, once delivered, may never be taken back. Emailed and immediately regretted. — Avi Steinberg

The only thing certain about any negotiation is that it will lead to another
negotiation . — Leigh Steinberg

The odd thing about comedy is that the more personal you are, the larger the audience. — David Steinberg

For a generation that gets most of its information off a computer screen (be it Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter or what have you), an athlete has to be very careful about the public/private aspect of that. Be careful not to be overly critical, be careful with use of language, and understand the whole world is watching. — Leigh Steinberg

The whole concept of negotiating is intimidating to many people. — Leigh Steinberg

If theme parks, with their pasteboard main streets, reek of a bland, safe, homogenized, whitebread America, the Renaissance Faire is at the other end of the social spectrum, a whiff of the occult, a flash of danger and a hint of the erotic. Here, they let you throw axes. Here are more beer and bosoms than you'll find in all of Disney World. - Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times — Rachel Lee Rubin

One way to cope with the provocations of novel art is to rest firm and maintain solid standards ... set by the critic's long-practiced taste and by his conviction that only those innovations will be significant which promote the established direction of advanced art. — Leo Steinberg

Forty years ago the chances of journalists reporting - or the authorities even prosecuting - a pro athlete were practically nil. — Leigh Steinberg

Now some alien force seems to have come and captured the Dodgers. I don't know what happened to my Dodgers. — Leigh Steinberg

It's learning how to negotiate to keep both sides happy - whether it's for a multi-million dollar contract or just which show to watch on TV, that determines the quality and enjoyment of our lives. — Leigh Steinberg

There are not so many murders in this township, I think to myself, and not so few policemen, that a killing should be treated like an old woman who has lost her cat. — Jonny Steinberg

The critic interested in a novel manifestation holds his criteria and taste in reserve. Since they were formed upon yesterday's art, he does not assume that they are ready-made for today. — Leo Steinberg

You don't need to be stable to be a stand-up comedian. — David Steinberg

Adolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn't mean that your teenager will be or should be the same ... Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn't mean that you push your child to be everything you were not. — Laurence Steinberg

ANTI-ZIONISTS, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting. — Milton Steinberg