Time & Perspective Quote by Norman Lear

Lear’s line lands like a shrug with a moral backbone: a refusal to mythologize a life’s work, even when the résumé begs for it. “Life is about having a good time” could read as lightweight hedonism, but coming from the producer who smuggled class conflict, racism, and feminism into America’s living rooms, it’s closer to a philosophy of stamina. Pleasure isn’t the opposite of seriousness; it’s the fuel that lets you keep showing up long enough to change something.

The sentence structure does the cultural work. He starts with a simple, almost sitcom-flat premise, then tightens it into a verdict: “and it was a good time.” Past tense, no begging for applause. The second line is the real Lear: the calibrated humility that still protects the achievement. “We did some things well and some things poorly” acknowledges misfires without indulging self-flagellation. The “we” matters, too. A producer’s ego could easily become a solo victory lap; Lear frames it as a collective project, the messy collaborative reality of television and social progress alike.

The kicker is “but that was always the case,” which quietly deflates the modern hunger for spotless legacies. It’s an argument against both nostalgia and cancellation: history is made by imperfect people making imperfect things in public. Lear’s intent isn’t to lower the bar; it’s to insist that the only honest measure is whether you kept the room alive, kept the jokes sharp, kept the conversation moving.