Top 120 Robert Redford Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “A lot of what acting is is paying attention.”

— Robert Redford

53. “I did not, like my children and people today, grow up with television as part of my life.”

— Robert Redford

54. “I’m not interested in a film about golf but I am interested in golf as a metaphor.”

— Robert Redford

55. “People are finally able to look around and say, ‘I can see the drought, I can see the rising sea levels, I can see the crops dying. Okay, now I get it.’ It is finally beginning to sink in that there has been a lot of damage.”

— Robert Redford

56. “I’m gonna die but I haven’t thought about retiring.”

— Robert Redford

57. “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

58. “The important thing about a sport is the people who devote their lives to it.”

— Robert Redford

59. “For me, personally, skiing holds everything. I used to race cars, but skiing is a step beyond that. It removes the machinery and puts you one step closer to the elements. And it’s a complete physical expression of freedom.”

— Robert Redford

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

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

— Robert Redford

64. “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

65. “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

66. “I’ve been able to carve out spaces for myself. At Sundance, I’m in the mountains – my property is private. I get on a horse and ride for three, four hours. Sometimes five. I get lost. But when I’m in, I’m in.”

— Robert Redford

67. “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

68. “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

69. “Utah is changing. There are good people in Utah. More people want to change the discriminatory laws than want to keep them. People should be able to marry whomever they love.”

— Robert Redford

70. “Success is a tricky mistress. It’s nice to have but it’s a tricky thing to embrace.”

— Robert Redford

71. “It’s good to say, ‘Look, I can’t always be right, but my gut tells me this’ – and then you confirm with your gut.”

— Robert Redford

72. “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

73. “Sundance started with two acres back in 1963 that I bought from a sheepherder for $500. What has happened, I could see development starting to descend on the state of Utah. I thought I had better acquire more land to protect it. I thought that would probably be my legacy, to protect land.”

— Robert Redford

74. “It’s all about greed and money and it’s the driving force in Hollywood.”

— Robert Redford

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

78. “I have a very low regard for cynics. I think it’s the beginning of dying.”

— Robert Redford

79. “San Franciscans are very proud of their city, and they should be. It’s the most beautiful place in the world.”

— Robert Redford

80. “Ideas aren’t real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.”

— Robert Redford

81. “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.”

— Robert Redford

82. “I’m not much interested in sport just as sport. I wouldn’t be interested in making a golf film or baseball or fishing film.”

— Robert Redford

83. “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

84. “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

85. “Journalism has changed tremendously because of the democratization of information. Anybody can put something up on the Internet. It’s harder and harder to find what the truth is.”

— Robert Redford

86. “Have a strong vision about the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it.”

— Robert Redford

87. “The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it’s all in the story.”

— Robert Redford

88. “I didn’t want the attacks to affect me. I don’t believe you should be led by fear.”

— Robert Redford

89. “I am passionate. I am political about my country, about what it is, how strong it is, how strong it remains.”

— Robert Redford

90. “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

91. “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

92. “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

93. “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

94. “Let’s get something straight – I don’t see myself as beautiful.”

— Robert Redford

95. “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

96. “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

97. “It seems everyone in Hollywood is getting pinched, lifted and pulled. I’m looking weird because I’m not.”

— Robert Redford

98. “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

99. “Golf has become so manicured, so perfect. The greens, the fairways. I don’t like golf carts. I like walking. Some clubs won’t let you in unless you have a caddy and a cart.”

— Robert Redford

100. “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