Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Goldwyn

Goldwyn’s line lands like a business memo disguised as a joke: the only winning move with critics is not to play. The first clause sounds like standard showbiz armor - don’t let the reviews rattle you. Then he swerves: “don’t even ignore them.” That twist is the whole trick. Ignoring critics still grants them a kind of gravitational pull; it implies you’ve registered their authority, then staged a defiant performance against it. Goldwyn’s punchline insists on a colder discipline: treat critical opinion as background noise, not an opponent.

It’s also a producer’s worldview, not an artist’s lament. Producers live at the intersection of taste and money, where attention is a finite currency and narrative is controllable. Critics can’t be argued into liking your film, and they can’t be allowed to become the story around your film. Goldwyn isn’t offering a tender self-care mantra; he’s prescribing focus. Put your energy into the audience, the talent, the distribution, the next project - things that move the needle.

The subtext carries a sly contempt for the critic-as-gatekeeper. In Golden Age Hollywood, reviews mattered, but mass marketing, star power, and studio machinery mattered more. Goldwyn’s quip reflects an industry learning to outscale judgment: when you can flood the zone with publicity, the sharpest review becomes just another column inch. The line’s brilliance is that it frames indifference as strategy, not sensitivity.