Creativity Quote by Oscar Hammerstein II

Hammerstein’s line lands like a gentle roast aimed at everyone in the room: audiences aren’t a resource to be “captured,” they’re a choice you have to earn. The joke is in the faux-mathematical framing - “unlimited” makes it sound like a discovery, when it’s really the oldest truth in entertainment. If you build something people don’t want, you can count on an infinite supply of absences.

Coming from a Broadway lyricist who helped define the American musical as mass culture, the intent feels practical, almost managerial. It’s advice to producers and creators tempted by prestige projects, trend-chasing, or the belief that “good for them” will automatically translate into “they’ll show up.” Hammerstein isn’t moralizing about taste; he’s puncturing the fantasy that marketing, reviews, or cultural obligation can substitute for desire.

The subtext is a quiet defense of the audience as co-author. Ticket buyers aren’t students assigned to a syllabus. Their refusal isn’t a failure of sophistication; it’s feedback. In the mid-century Broadway ecosystem - where a show’s survival depended on repeat business, word of mouth, and tourists making a single expensive decision - indifference was the real killer. Not hatred. Not controversy. Just “nah.”

It also reads as an artist’s self-check: if you’re blaming the public for not coming, you may be dodging the harder question of whether you made something worth leaving the house for.