Top 100 Robert Redford Quotes
#1. The important thing about a sport is the people who devote their lives to it.
Robert Redford
#2. Well first of all it's a business and it's a tough business, and you have to have the strength to survive all the set backs all the failures that make this a mean business, that's getting meaner and meaner every year in my opinion.
Robert Redford
#3. He's meant to be that classic Homer, Ulysses, Hercules - a character who goes out or has some gift of some kind. He goes on a journey of discovery and part of that is falling into darkness - the temptations of life.
Robert Redford
#4. I remember my dad came from Ireland and Scotland, and so he carried with him the fear of poverty. So when I wanted to break loose, it kind of made him very nervous.
Robert Redford
#5. 'Butch Cassidy' was the only film I ever enjoyed making.
Robert Redford
#6. Television tells us only the things it wants to. It still feeds us heroes, it still offers villains. And even though we know better than to always trust it, we still watch.
Robert Redford
#7. In fact you've got your hands tied behind your back when somebody chooses to take a low road in to you, there is nothing you can do about it, and so you just live with it and move on.
Robert Redford
#8. Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.
Robert Redford
#9. We've poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our passion to control nature, things have gone out of control. Progress from now on has to mean something different. We're running out of resources and we are running out of time.
Robert Redford
#10. When people start thinking of you more as a persona, they are less inclined to allow you to move into different areas. Sometimes they're wrong. Sometimes they're just very stereotypical or restricted in their own thinking of what they'll allow you to do.
Robert Redford
#11. Hollywood was not a place I dreamed of getting to. I never could take seriously the obsession people have about being a celebrity or getting to Hollywood - I was born next door.
Robert Redford
#12. Once you leave Sundance suddenly you run into bulldozers and concrete and cranes, and all that heritage that the Mormon culture used to be so proud of is turned into out of control develpoment.
Robert Redford
#13. I work because I want to work. Work keeps me going.
Robert Redford
#14. When I grew up, shame was used as a tool for check and balance. If you stood a chance of hearing someone say, "Shame on you," or "You should be ashamed of yourself," you thought twice. It doesn't seem to be a factor today.
Robert Redford
#17. As a director, I wouldn't like me as an actor. As an actor, I wouldn't like me as a director.
Robert Redford
#18. I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.
Robert Redford
#19. I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet.
Robert Redford
#21. I did not, like my children and people today, grow up with television as part of my life.
Robert Redford
#23. I can't go into a bar anywhere without someone starting to play 'the Entertainer'.
Robert Redford
#24. I don't know what your childhood was like, but we didn't have much money. We'd go to a movie on a Saturday night, then on Wednesday night my parents would walk us over to the library. It was such a big deal, to go in and get my own book.
Robert Redford
#25. Curiously, directing my own films have made me more tolerant and patient. I've always been an extremely impatient actor. Waiting around drove me nuts. But now I'm much more sympathetic to a director's struggle.
Robert Redford
#26. I'm gonna die but I haven't thought about retiring.
Robert Redford
#27. You're never going to be the same person you are right now.
Robert Redford
#28. I'm fascinated by journalism. I put a keen eye, not a negative eye, on its role, particularly how it is changed by the times we're living in.
Robert Redford
#29. I love making films more than anything, but it's tough.
Robert Redford
#30. I'm not interested in a film about golf but I am interested in golf as a metaphor.
Robert Redford
#32. It's all about greed and money and it's the driving force in Hollywood.
Robert Redford
#33. [Making Ordinary People] was a wonderful experience. Tremendous. I haven't seen it since. It belongs to the public now; it no longer really belongs to me.
Robert Redford
#34. Sport is a wonderful metaphor for life. Of all the sports that I played - skiing, baseball, fishing - there is no greater example than golf, because you're playing against yourself and nature.
Robert Redford
#35. I didn't want the attacks to affect me. I don't believe you should be led by fear.
Robert Redford
#36. I think documentary filmmakers need as much protection as possible under journalist's privilege. How else is the public to know what is going on?
Robert Redford
#37. I can't think of anything outside of having the gift yourself and creating yourself. I can't think of the next better thing to do than being able to put it back. Creative expression, I think, is vital to the success of any society ... A society without art will die.
Robert Redford
#38. Once the festival achieved a certain level of notoriety, then people began to come here with agendas that were not the same as ours. We can't do anything about that. We can't control that.
Robert Redford
#39. The art of making a film and its content are far more interesting to me than the result or impact.
Robert Redford
#40. I think that people should be paying a lot more attention to other issues, rather than who's the top 10 this or ... who's the sexiest or the most beautiful.
Robert Redford
#41. From my experience in my country, America over and over again takes itself right to the brink, it puts one foot over but it never goes over. It wakes up at the last minute and says woah, and then pulls back.
Robert Redford
#42. You can't completely control the sport - Tiger Woods comes close. The test is against yourself and nature's own way. I find golf a particularly good metaphor for this story.
Robert Redford
#43. Part of me is drawn to the nature of sadness because I think life is sad, and sadness is not something that should be avoided or denied. It's a fact of life, like contradictions are.
Robert Redford
#44. When I was a kid, nobody told me I was good-looking. I wish they had. I would've had a better time.
Robert Redford
#45. I never had a problem with my face on screen. I thought it is what it is, and I was turned off by actors and actresses that tried to keep themselves young.
Robert Redford
#46. Sometimes the failures can be exciting and fun. It's just a step on the road, it's not the end of something.
Robert Redford
#47. It seems everyone in Hollywood is getting pinched, lifted and pulled. I'm looking weird because I'm not.
Robert Redford
#48. Storytellers broaden our minds: engage, provoke, inspire, and ultimately, connect us.
Robert Redford
#49. The way you really find out about the performer's seriousness about the cause is how long they stay with it when the spotlight gets turned off. You see a lot of celebrities switch gears. They go from the environment to animal rights to obesity or whatever. That I don't have a lot of respect for.
Robert Redford
#50. I don't think about when it's going to stop and what you do before it stops. You just keep moving.
Robert Redford
#51. Water is the sleeping giant issue of the 21st century and we all need to wake up about it.
Robert Redford
#52. Times change; Hollywood is not the same as it was when I first entered the business. It felt to me like it was starting to narrow down and centralize itself around what would ... make money.
Robert Redford
#53. What is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Robert Redford
#54. The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.
Robert Redford
#55. If you stay in Beverly Hills too long, you become a Mercedes.
Robert Redford
#56. I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?
Robert Redford
#57. Lastly get emotionally connected to your story so you can deliver it, you know, if you can't deliver the emotions to your script there's no point to your story. Story is the key.
Robert Redford
#58. I was never a good student. I had to be dragged into kindergarten. It was hard to sit and listen to somebody talk. I wanted to be out, educated by experience and adventure, and I didn't know how to express that.
Robert Redford
#59. What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.
Robert Redford
#60. I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.
Robert Redford
#61. People have been so busy relating to how I look, it's a miracle I didn't become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm.
Robert Redford
#62. Success is a tricky mistress. It's nice to have but it's a tricky thing to embrace.
Robert Redford
#63. As an artist I just can't think of a better life than the one I've been blessed with. It's just a great ride.
Robert Redford
#64. It's an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul.
Robert Redford
#65. In fact, I think more broadly about what an audience requires, but I want an audience to be fascinated by the process of finding an answer, or finding out there isn't one.
Robert Redford
#66. Whenever there's chaos, there's ambiguity, and where there's ambiguity, there's fear. And fear gets manipulated.
Robert Redford
#67. You should prepare when you go to a public event to be public. That's when I will sign autographs. But not when you're going about your normal business.
Robert Redford
#68. I don't remember spending any time with anybody on set. I don't spend a lot of time with people.
Robert Redford
#69. Criticism challenges current findings. The effort to defend one's position can lead to deeper insights or consideration of options previously not considered.
Robert Redford
#70. What we are living with is the result of human choices and it can be changed by making better, wiser choices.
Robert Redford
#71. Filmgoers are starved for new ideas, voices and visions.
Robert Redford
#72. Any time I saw people treated unfairly because of race, creed, whatever - it struck a nerve.
Robert Redford
#73. If our humanity - our soul as a society - is overtaken by the materiel and cosmetic, there will be no hope of peace.
Robert Redford
#74. Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it.
Robert Redford
#75. The way I deal with arthritis is to keep moving. As long as I can play hard tennis, as long as I can ski or ride a horse - all kinds of things can come your way. As long as you can, do it. People who retire die. My dad retired and died shortly after. Just keep moving.
Robert Redford
#76. When I was a kid I was not a good student. I went to the University of Colarado, my grades were poor. I was asked to leave after a year. What I really wanted to do was to be an artist.
Robert Redford
#77. I believe the American people care a lot about the environment.
Robert Redford
#78. Ideas aren't real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.
Robert Redford
#79. The focus of entertainment is taking away from what the public needs as news. I think investigative journalism will always be important and always find its way, be it on the Internet or wherever.
Robert Redford
#80. You work like hell to get yourself ahead in the business. You could go anywhere before, and suddenly you can't go anywhere. It's like being a cartoon character.
Robert Redford
#81. If you talk about an issue, what comes back is a description of what you're wearing. Reporters only want to know how tall you are and if your teeth are capped.
Robert Redford
#82. I was blessed to look well and retain a youthful look but that was just genes. I was disappointed when critics started pointing out my wrinkles. I thought, you mean this is what it's gonna be about now? I'm not going to be permitted to be human?
Robert Redford
#83. I believe in mythology. I guess I share Joseph Campbell's notion that a culture or society without mythology would die, and we're close to that.
Robert Redford
#84. If you want to slice into America, it's pretty red, white, and blue in terms of how it goes about things, but there's a gray area there, and I've always been interested in where things are complicated.
Robert Redford
#85. Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.
Robert Redford
#86. There is nothing I can do about this stuff and I am pretty well ok with the fact that I think Sundance is not going to be stopped by it, because he Festival is itself now, and doesn't need me out there to talk about it like I did years ago.
Robert Redford
#87. So what if my face is falling apart? I don't give a damn. Anyway, it gives me character. Everyone thinks that they can stay pretty forever but some come out of Beverly Hills surgeries looking scary to me.
Robert Redford
#88. I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.
Robert Redford
#89. There's a lot of money to be made by strip-mining and drilling the dirtiest oil on the planet. But why should the rest of us pay the price?
Robert Redford
#90. Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.
Robert Redford
#91. When things become insurmountable, some people quit, some keep going
for no other reason than to continue. Because that's all there is to do.
Robert Redford
#93. I guess the optimistic thing is that those people in Congress who are climate deniers, I think their time has run out.
Robert Redford
#94. The measure of our success will be the condition on which we leave the world for the next generation.
Robert Redford
#95. I look at going to Hollywood as going behind enemy lines. You parachute in, set up the explosion, then fly out before it goes off.
Robert Redford
#97. I think "quiet" sometime is a greater power than noise. It can harbor and reveal feelings that can't be expressed.
Robert Redford
#98. The world around us is in a sea change, and I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it
Robert Redford
#99. All my life I've been dogged by guilt because I feel there is this difference between the way I look and the way I feel inside.
Robert Redford
#100. When I became successful, I put up a caution. I didn't think it was fair to have the shadow of that kind of success thrown on my family. And I was cautious about being taken by things that could destroy you.
Robert Redford
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