Quotes About Innovation

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

We don't need another Woody. Even Bob Dylan knew he couldn't be Woody Guthrie... I like Woody Guthrie fine, but I don't need the 50th generation version of it.

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.

My influences were Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce.

Woody Allen stayed so good because he never left New York. Howard Stern stayed so good because he never left New York - Mel Brooks when he just got out of New York was doing 'Blazing Saddles;' when he left New York he started doing stuff like 'Robin Hood Men In Tights' - he was in L.A. too long. He lost the edge.

When we created 'Goodness Gracious Me,' it was quoting 'Python' and Woody Allen lines that really bonded the writers, and the 'Spamalot' material is so utterly, wonderfully surreal that it hasn't dated.

I think I always have Woody Allen in mind whenever I'm creating anything. He's such a genius, and I think 'Annie Hall' is one of the greatest movies ever written.

When I was starting, there were wool mills in the U.S. that could make you anything. The U.S. used to produce the most beautiful cotton denim in the world. Now all that is gone.

Black people created punk - the band Death was way before The Ramones. Same with Bad Brains. If you think about it, the wool has been pulled over our eyes.

What I think of as 'freakonomics' is mostly storytelling around an idea - not a theme but an idea. I like ideas much more than themes. Themes are boring. Themes are, 'Wool is back,' but ideas are, 'Why is wool back?'

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

Jazz is a fighter. The word 'jazz' means to me, 'I dare you. Let's jump into the unknown!'

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

I like the word 'autopilot' more than I like the word 'self-driving.' 'Self-driving' sounds like it's going to do something you don't want it to do. 'Autopilot' is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.

Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Don't ever empty the bucket of mystery. Never let people define what you do. It's not about zigging when you should zag. It's not about doing something unprecedented and unpredictable. It's just about never being a word, or something that is not in the process of transformation.

When they say 'jazz,' I'm thinking of a word called 'the creative process.' It intersects every vein and tributary, avenue, path, that everyone's living. It crosses through there, but it's been contained.

Apple took the edge off the word 'computer.'

Bill Gates is a very rich man today... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.