Top 85 Quotes & Sayings by Dan Harmon

Everyone knows that there are more people watching any given show than is being registered by the Nielsen system.

I care very much what the fans think. I'm starting to loosen my grip on caring about what critics say, because I think that critics care about what fans think of them, too, so there's a little bit of a refraction there, through that glass.

My passion for 'Star Trek' is actually rooted in my love of television and the art of franchise and a premise designed to stick people together that have to figure out what to do.

I don't really have a lot of appropriate feelings for people on an individual basis, but I've always wanted to make people happy.

Well, the average person comes home from work really tired, and just wants to flip through channels until they land on the thing that's the least objectionable to them. They're not looking for their new favorite TV show because they know that that search will take forever and they'll go to bed unhappy.

TV in all its ugliness can be a beautiful thing.

There's the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there's less women writing scripts and out there looking for the job.

Television is a populous, derivative, democratic medium.

I really like performing for people.

I think that casting is probably the most important thing in television production.

I was raised on NBC television.

People often ask me about what constitutes a nerd-friendly show - like, does it have to have sci-fi elements? But I think it's just a show that satisfies the secret craving we all have to be obsessed with something and not feel at all stupid about it.

Emotionally, shows like 'Cheers' and 'Taxi' were classic sitcoms when I was growing up.

I feel like my life has always been the 'Hey Look at Me Show.' I'm not apologetic about that.

Maybe I am just a jerk.

There's a fine line between a stream of consciousness and a babbling brook to nowhere.

I'm from Wisconsin so I always feel a little nauseous about begging and trying to trick people into liking me.

Eight o'clock is hard no matter what network you're on because people have to make a decision to sit down and start watching TV. Every other time slot is a time slot that happens after someone's watching something else.

Class clowns are never allowed to date anybody decent, but you don't get beaten up, you're invited to parties, and everybody likes you.

When I was a kid I never knew the difference between a sitcom and a drama. I just knew what my parents were watching and what was making them happy.

I feel like I am a good person and a professional, very able leader of men.

I've never done well when I've been appreciated. I've done best when I'm targeted for death.

There are lots of emotions that go with the Fourth of July.

The concept of doing holiday episodes is a huge part of what's fantastic about doing TV. And viewers agree; you see the numbers going up for holiday episodes.

I am a collaborator with everyone who agrees that I need to be in control. I happily collaborate with my loyalists.

If your ratings are high and there's money being made, you're allowed to be a perfectionist in television.

I love '30 Rock.' It's one of my favorite shows. It's certainly the gold standard of comedy writing.

I think women are different, and I think having them in the room is crucial to a family comedy, ensemble comedy, television comedy, where half the eyeballs on your show are women.

I don't think it's going to be possible for the next generation of writers to tell stories without telling stories about telling stories.

The public's perception of your show is what it is, and you don't get to complain how people perceive your show or talk about it.

Truthfully, I'm pretty stuck in the '80s.

I am absolutely and inherently self-destructive in that I am always making sure I'm doing what I want to do.

I wish that television would stop selling our hatred of ourselves, and start seducing us with our love of ourselves.

When you watch the sitcoms that were the big hits when I was growing up, TV was still just TV. It was allowed to just be TV. There were three channels that were competing for the whole family and you couldn't take your business elsewhere.

Technology changes the medium. I grew up on watching a box in my living room that made my parents happy. After something is gone, the dust will settle and I'll see what's next.

Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn’t make you good. Writing badly does.

I'd just love to sit at home, wake up at 10AM, go to my own office with my dog, and write a movie. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that though. I think I'll just end up playing Minecraft and self-destructing.

Everything I do, in the middle of it, I lose all objectivity. The business of comedy is kind of ridiculous in that respect. Your job is to have a lot of fun in a jar, then sell it. There's something inherently illogical and impossible about that, but that being said, this is as good as it gets.

I was playing the game where I was going to be a great TV or film writer some day and there was nothing else that I thought about, including other people.

You have to just look at it like Titanic: I know the ship sinks, but this is a love story

With media, it's never bad-to-good. It's always just moving from different to different. Faster, more stuff, but there's always good, more good, and more bad.

I always try to use my medium, and if I get into a normal sitcom-writing contest with normal sitcom writers, I'm going to lose.

Storytelling comes naturally to humans, but since we live in an unnatural world, we sometimes need a little help doing what we'd naturally do.

Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops, and keep doing it until the people that are looking for you find you.

None of us are bad people. We float around and we run across each other and we learn about ourselves, and we make mistakes and we do great things. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves, we make others happy and we please ourselves. We can and should forgive ourselves and each other for that.

I wish people used wishes to modify themselves instead of others. Wish to be low maintenance. Wish to be autonomous, even.

Pretty sad. Pretty lonely. But that's how I prefer it? I quess? I guess. It's a good guess. It's the best quess ever.

All [tv] shows are like cigarettes. You watch two, you have a higher chance of watching three. They're all addictive.

The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too.

I have to be really careful, because I have nothing but love for this entity known as "the customer" in entertainment. I would never, ever, ever put myself above them and say, "They don't get it, but it's funny, believe me." If they're not laughing, I'm doing my job wrong.

Don't be so hard on yourself, don't put pressure on yourself, life is just a chain of experiments and results, and you'll be perfect when you're dead.

Wake up in the morning and say, 'I refuse to be a hack,' and see what happens by the end of the day.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are the people that will have you think that there are two kinds of people in this world, and there are the 'good; people. There is no good, there is no evil, there is just a war going on between the people that want you to think there's a war going on and the people that know there doesn't have to be one.

I guess working in the legitimate industry, the best thing you can take away from it is acceptance of the incompetence that often surrounds you. No, that sounds horrible. The most important thing, I guess, is the fact that working in the legitimate industry, what I see all too often is people trying to interpret the wishes of the audience, which with today's technology, is all too easy to measure empirically.

There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird, all of it is human and all humanity is better than everything inhuman. So I urge you to keep expressing yourself as honestly as you can, and know that the backpedals and second-guesses really aren't necessary - they don't hurt but they're wasting your time - because when you are truly human, as we all are, and when that is your honest message to anyone, you are beyond reproach, there is no way to screw it up.

There are no normal people, there are just different kinds of weird.

What's important is passion, investment, and people laughing out loud as they work.

I've discovered a new video game called owning my home.

Once upon a time, something happened, and it was better than something not happening. The end.

Yoda is interesting because, in addition to being wise, he is two feet tall, and a Yoda.