Quotes About Relevance

Beware clarity. A man speaking to you in clear language is clearly using obsolete ideas.

When I see some over-dressed yuppie wearing suspenders today, I just smile and think that in some things Papa was ahead of his time.

The reason 'Hamilton' works is because there is no distance between that story that happened 200-some-odd years ago and now, because it looks like America now. It helps create a connection that wouldn't have been there if it was 20 white guys on stage.

The Backstreet Boys were so ten years ago. Whatever.

If somebody told me people would still care about our music 25 years ago, I would have thought they were crazy.

Because you're telling a story, and I'm sure people fifty years ago would tell the same story differently if they were telling it to you today. Because the time is different. The film is the work of today's audience.

Ten years ago, in 94, we thought maybe nobody would ever care about Styx again.

Who is to say that 5 men 10 years ago were right whereas 5 men looking the other direction today are wrong.

It's not so easy to apply to today's society things that were written thousands of years ago. But that's exactly the job of a minister - to make the teaching of the Bible relevant.

People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

For example, a man who might not have enormous charisma, who could be president 40 years ago, and who was a deserving president, I don't know that George Washington would be a president today, I don't know that Abe Lincoln would, I don't know that Roosevelt would.

If Sir John A. MacDonald or any other leader of that day were here now, he would have a different program from that of sixty years ago. He sought to give his people policies suited to the time in which he lived.

Thirty years ago dinner theatre used to be much more of a going concern than it is now.

Until a few years ago, the topics in my Ph.D. were unfashionable, but they are very popular today.

I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.

People feel compelled to continue reading and hearing the news. Sometimes, you just want somebody to be yelling at it with you as you're reading it. I think of that as my function.

People have been listening to Burning Spear for a long time now, and they know who I am and what I stand for. Yes, I do address many of the same ideas from album to album, adding only a little different flavor or coloring. Yes, the message has remained virtually the same because the issues haven't gone away yet.

The No. 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's relevant to 10 million people. That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture.

Yes, Justin Bieber is a contrivance. Yes, Justin Bieber's lyrics are insipid - worse still, disingenuous. Yes, his tattoos stink. Yes, he's lousy at skateboarding. But what does any of this actually matter? In case you missed it, Bieber won.

The way you want to respond is to ask a question: Is this technology directly relevant to our hedgehog concept? If the answer is YES, then we want to become pioneers, not in the technology, but in the application of that technology specifically linked to our hedgehog concept.

We must not be hampered by yesterday's myths in concentrating on today's needs.

You put an old Misfits record on, and it sounds like it came out yesterday.

Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Business models that are relevant today are not relevant tomorrow and were not in existence yesterday.