Quotes from Shane Smith

If you look at film, distribution is pre-bought. If you've paid for the distribution, you say, 'I have to make sure it's a film that gets enough butts in the seats.' I think that's the problem: It becomes prohibitively expensive, and you can't develop films for a smaller amount of money.

American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds. I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved it has completely failed to act as an effective fourth estate. And young people didn't sleep through that, as is widely believed; they learned instead not to trust what they were being told.

I don't know about you, but there is nothing that's scarier than young people who have no future. If you take away someone's future, they have nothing to lose.

If you look not just at the Arab Spring, but at what I call the 'Youth Spring' that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.

I think if you look at the failure of journalism in the modern age, then I don't want to be called a journalist.

I have a place in Costa Rica that is in the middle of the jungle. There's no Internet. There's no TV. Do I work there? Hell no.

I think the biggest issue for legacy media - both TV and film - is that it just costs too much money to develop a TV series or movie. And most of them don't work. Then the one that works has to pay for the rest.

I don't care if I die - look, I'm old - but you want your kids to have good times and a good life.

I don't care if I die - look, I'm old - but you want your kids to have good times and a good life. I became sort of aware. I used to get so angry.

Whenever I view success, I'm dressed as Mozart on an island.

Gen Y consume most of their media online and mobile. Gen Y, as the Baby Boomers drop off, are the largest cohort with the largest amount of money - despite the fact that half of them are unemployed.

Online is a revolution. The Internet is a revolution. And we should be revolutionary in the content that we put on it rather than derivative.

I woke up. I was like, "Look, you can do anything you want - and you want a lot of things, so you should get to work."

It's our job to get into the hardest-to-see places and bring back the best footage - we have the best footage of North Korea ever shot. If that's a stunt, then I'll keep on doing stunts until I die.

You have a lot of companies developing stuff that's just derivative. If 'The Voice' is the No. 1 show on TV, they say, 'Let's do 100 different versions of 'The Voice.' The problem is, by the time you get to market, it's already saturated, and everybody hates the format.

The whole sort of debate of classic objective journalism versus a new immersion journalism - that can go on forever... I made no bones about my position: I don't think you can be objective.

The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy. As a result, Obama is to the right of Richard Nixon on most issues. And there is we believe, certainly some space to exploit there. And we, VICE, aim to exploit it.

People think because 'Vice' is irreverent and because we're crazy, we're stunt journalists. You know what? I don't actually care.

I never thought we had a chance of impacting anything. I am just starting to realize that we can change things - not just VICE, but all of us. In fact, we have to.

I want to build the next CNN with 'VICE' - it's within my grasp.

If not doing VICE, I probably would be selling Cokes on the beach in Vietnam. I like the sea.

I want to be like Tom Freston. Tom just flies around everywhere, gets to make movies, gets to start TV shows, hang out with cool people and do whatever he wants.