"I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience"
About this Quote
The line pushes back on a culture that worships credentials and apprenticeship while quietly punishing singularity. Streisand’s screen presence and musical choices weren’t designed to blend in; they were designed to land. “Experience” can be a polite synonym for institutional taste: notes from producers, inherited rules about what a leading lady should look like, how a woman should sound, when she should soften. By saying she doesn’t worry about it, she’s not dismissing craft so much as refusing to let the industry’s memory overwrite her own internal compass.
There’s also a gendered charge. Men get to be “visionary” when they act on gut; women get labeled “difficult.” Streisand’s phrasing turns that insult into a tool: instinct becomes authority, not impulsiveness. It’s a quiet claim to authorship, especially significant for a performer who became a director and producer when the system offered few lanes for women to control the work.
The intent isn’t to romanticize inexperience. It’s to elevate a different kind of expertise: the accumulated intelligence of taste, timing, and self-trust. In a business built on imitation, she’s arguing that originality is its own resume.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Streisand, Barbra. (2026, January 17). I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-go-by-instinct-i-dont-worry-about-experience-44630/
Chicago Style
Streisand, Barbra. "I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-go-by-instinct-i-dont-worry-about-experience-44630/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-go-by-instinct-i-dont-worry-about-experience-44630/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.











