Russell Simmons Quotes

I think you always have to go as an artist with instinct, I really do.

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.

You can be intuitive when you've got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

I just choose the scripts I want to work on. I don't know why. It's not something conscious or that I'm doing on purpose.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct.

Entrepreneurs are great at dealing with uncertainty and also very good at minimizing risk. That's the classic great entrepreneur.

I've never played someone where I felt it was beneficial to build from the outside in.

A man, to carry on a successful business, must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. A man can cultivate this faculty only by an appreciation of the finer things in life.

I like to do things sort of intuitively, I think.

None of my books has been ever in my head; after they're finished, they go. It's like being a sort of medium; you just grab it when it's there then just release it when it's time to go. There's a lot of instinct, not planning.

I didn't have a business degree. I didn't have experience to work in somebody else's office. I never built or ran a department. So I was on this journey, and when the time came to make a decision, I was just going with my gut.

I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things on a kind of rational level. We are much more willing to admit that certain things are completely instinctive and others are really intellectual.

I don't really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

A lot of people who own a business aren't entrepreneurial at all.

I usually have pretty good intuition on projects that I work on.

Not only did I enjoy the creative side of Playboy and enjoy being surrounded by people who are curious about life, but I also love the analytical and hard business side of it.

I'm not a marketing person. I don't ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

I think in terms of emotions. And feelings. So sometimes what I say may not always be clear. But creatively, there's a lot to be said for that way of thinking.

I don't approach anything I do like an academic. I'm not trained, and I work with intuition a great deal.

Honestly, I think most directors are about, 'Let's do the most fun and effective thing here and figure out how afterwards.'

A subset of CEOs is that of entrepreneurs. And the classical definition of an entrepreneur is an individual who pursues opportunity without regard to the resources currently controlled. That sounds like a very different person than one might expect an analytical investment manager to be.

I wasn't born a natural entrepreneur. I had to be trained.

The best decisions are taken quickly and well. You can prepare yourself, have all aspects of the game thought through, but the one who shines on the pitch is the one with intuition.