Ben Silbermann Quotes

Most of the problems in life are because of two reasons, we act without thinking or we keep thinking without acting.

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.

I like the life of ideas and applying ideas to action.

I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

I always say to people when I'm trying to get something going, bringing on other producers or other directors, "You can think of 95 reasons why not to make a movie. You've got to address why you want to make the movie and get it done. Just do it." I tend to live by that rule.

Sometimes too much thinking leads to the Death of Doing

You have to sometimes just run with the problem rather than trying to solve it with hi-tech wizardry and lots of planning.

Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.

We haven't got the money, so we've got to think.

I think all actors want to change. When you do something many times, over and over, you want to do something fresh. But movie is still my business. A lot of action actors want change, but no studio wants to spend money on something that is not guaranteed; not proven. I think it is very difficult. It is hard to change.

I was frequently told at drama school that I was thinking too much.

How many situations can be resolved with less thinking?

I’m not against thinking; I’m only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.

Eventually, I decided that thinking was not getting me very far and it was time to try building.

I think the whole thing that Jamie [Hyneman] and I have in working together is that we are constantly simplifying each other's designs, and we both appreciate that the quickest and the dirtiest solution is usually the most elegant, the least expensive, and the fastest.

I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.

I was never much of a reader when I was a boy. Books bored me. I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I'd imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

I like taking things apart and putting them back together. Tinkering. I'd be a professional tinkerer. Tinkerbell. I think that's what they're called.

The game I play is a very interesting one. It's imagination in a straightjacket, which is this: that it has to agree with the known laws of physics. ... It requires imagination to think of what's possible, and then it requires an analysis back, checking to see whether it fits, whether its allowed, according to what's known, okay?

Don't let complexity stop you.

Thought expands, but paralyzes; action animates, but narrows.

It is very important to embrace failure and to do a lot of stuff — as much stuff as possible — with as little fear as possible. It’s much, much better to wind up with a lot of crap having tried it than to overthink in the beginning and not do it.

The way to do some things is to do them.