Robert Redford Thinking Quotations

I think there was something that made us not pay attention to climate change. Something that was up there. There was a saying when we were trying to pay attention to the environment that people used this phrase NIMBY - not in my back yard. People were saying, 'I don't care, it is not in my back yard.' But now it's in everyone's back yard.

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.

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?

As an actor and as a person you come together with being in familiar territory although that has not been my whole life. That's been a part of it. I think a lot of people associate me with the west because of Sundance.

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.

I guess the optimistic thing is that those people in Congress who are climate deniers, I think their time has run out.

I think "quiet" sometime is a greater power than noise. It can harbor and reveal feelings that can't be expressed.

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.

It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter.

There's a lot of hyperventilation that takes off before the [Sundance Film] Festival, a lot of buzz. Every year we hear, this is going to be the new this, this is going to be the new that, and it never is. The buzz just doesn't mean anything. I'm glad it doesn't. Because I think the festival shows that what succeeds is content.

I think you just keep going. I've been that way, my whole life.

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.

I have a very low regard for cynics. I think it's the beginning of dying.

I didn't think about politics until I came to Europe.

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

I think Hollywood... well, there is no Hollywood anymore so let's just call it the mainstream since the business is no longer Hollywood producing its own films and then distributing, they just distribute.

I don't think you can ever return, really.

Usually I like to improvise. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the piece, I like to improvise because I think it brings certain freshness and a reality to it, as long as it doesn't go too far out of the box.

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.

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.

I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists.

Storytelling was a way to see the world bigger than the one you were looking at, and that had great appeal for me. I think since that was part of my upbringing, it became part of me, and I wanted to pass it along to my kids and my grandkids.

I don't think about when it's going to stop and what you do before it stops. You just keep moving.

It felt to me like America was always wanting to resolve things too quickly, without thinking through what the costs and consequences would be and how that affects an individual living in that world. Then as I grew up and went about my life, I think I just got more and more interested in that gray area where things are not so easily quantified.

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.

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?