Gimmick Quotes & Sayings

The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out. — Jackie Cooper

Accusing us of being a gimmick is a bit like accusing Jesus Christ of having 'a bit of a messiah complex'. True, maybe, but when faced with the undeniable genius of what we put out, does that really still matter? — Gorillaz

In a weird way, 'Veronica Mars' was my reaction to 'Freaks and Geeks' because 'Freaks and Geeks' was the show I wanted to write, the one I wanted to create, where there was no gimmick; you didn't have to have a teenage private eye. It was just these beautiful small stories about real kids. — Rob Thomas

Her gaze follows my every move. I think she can feel something is weird but hasn't put her finger on it yet. Maybe she's seen my fangs and written them off as gimmick. I fucking love gimmicks. They're so convenient to hide behind. — Carrie Clevenger

With each passing decade, history becomes less real for us, less immediate and essential to our way of life, and so, like 'green' nature, more of a commodity or an advertising gimmick. — John Burnside

The trick with modern warfare was not to outgun the enemy, but carry weapons he could not gimmick. — Gordon R. Dickson

[Death is] a gimmick. It's the time-birth-death gimmick. Can't go on much longer, too many people are wising up. — William S. Burroughs

At its zenith Sears accounted for more than 2 percent of all retail sales in the United States. It pioneered several innovations critical to the success of today's most admired retailers: for example, supply chain management, store brands, catalogue retailing, and credit card sales. The esteem in which Sears' management was held shows in this 1964 excerpt from Fortune: "How did Sears do it? In a way, the most arresting aspect of its story is that there was no gimmick. Sears opened no big bag of tricks, shot off no skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though everybody in its organization simply did the right thing, easily and naturally. And their cumulative effect was to create an extraordinary powerhouse of a company. — Clayton M Christensen

Awards are only a publicity gimmick. — Tony Randall

My incarceration was actually a positive thing from the beginning. I needed a gimmick to get my act going again, it gave me material. — Tommy Chong

There are a lot of bands using self-abuse as a marketing gimmick. — Bruce Dickinson

When you're as plain as I am, you've gotta have a gimmick. — Ralph Hall

I spent my life - all my life - learning to wrestle. It's the only means of livelihood I've ever had and, uh, the only gimmick that I have in wrestling is wrestling. — Lou Thesz

These days, you have to have a gimmick to do the weather. You have to have an act. — Willard Scott

I always wanted to make strangers and friends and family laugh. I was over ten years younger than my brothers. It was hard to get attention without some kind of gimmick, like athletic stardom or being funny. — Gary Gulman

Theory and knowledge remain suspect, not because of inherent worthlessness, but because of their historic isolation from action. Without theoretical orientation, however, action is vulnerable to oversimplified and glib imitativeness-even mimicry-and to the use of the gimmick. — Erving Polster

Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know. — Robert M. Pirsig

Gimmicks? Here we go again. I'm tired of people sayin' we rely on gimmicks. What is this? The world is nothin' but a big gimmick isn't it? Wars, napalm bombs and all that. People being burned-up on TV ... Yes, we do. — Jimi Hendrix

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money! — Duke Ellington

I'm 19 years old. I think I'm doing a pretty good job ... Basically from my heart I really just want to say it really should be about to music. It should be about the craft that I'm making. This is not a gimmick and I'm an artist and I should be taken seriously. — Justin Bieber

It's very rare to have a patient who isn't absolutely delighted when you say, 'I read your feedback. The session didn't go well. You actually got more upset, and I made about three really horrible errors.' If you do that from the heart and not as a gimmick, boy, it's a wonderful thing. — David D. Burns

Anytime you run a gimmick offence, you're a little bit afraid - you're not sound in what you're doing in your base stuff. — Richard Sherman

It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step. — Gian-Carlo Rota

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life. — Jean Goss

I didn't want to be written about as a human-interest story. I didn't want to be a passing thing. You know, now we move on to the fat girl who had her stomach stapled. I didn't want to become a gimmick: the disabled model. — Aimee Mullins

Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture. — Method Man

Mindfulness - it isn't a trick or a gimmick. It's being present in the moment. When I'm with you, I'm with you. Right now. That's all. No more and no less. — Will Schwalbe

A little inventor, that's it! ... of a little gimmick! ... just a little gimmick that's all! ... I don't fling out messages to the world! ... not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth! ... I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas! ... I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

And what I'm telling you now is not for you to go out and try the same ways I try, or not to even try my technique. Just put it to your personality, put it to yourself, and you develop your workout. Cause those books and things, those are other people's gimmicks and hypes. Build your own gimmick and hype, and that'll make you a better powerlifter. Not just doin' it like James does it, cause if you try to fly off the building like superman you'll be out there in the middle of the street. — Big James Henderson

I am a successful lecturer in physics for popular audiences. The real entertainment gimmick is the excitement, drama and mystery of the subject matter. People love to learn something, they are 'entertained' enormously by being allowed to understand a little bit of something they never understood before. One must have faith in the subject and in people's interest in it. — Richard P. Feynman

Why is a movie starring women considered a gimmick and a movie starring men is just a normal movie? — Paul Feig

'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?' — Robert Gottlieb

Mitt Romney has a new fundraising gimmick. If you donate $3 or more to his campaign, your name will be entered into a drawing to win a dinner with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. If you donate more than $10, you get to sit at a different table. — Jay Leno

Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick. — Marilyn Manson

We had a wonderful time with this kind of grunge awareness, where suddenly rock was cool again. People wanted to head loud guitars. It was a great time, and I'm glad we were there. But the gimmick part has worn off. — Billy Corgan

I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The biggest and most interesting crisis in the world is the human crisis, and it never gets boring. It goes back to Shakespeare. You don't need a gimmick; it's just man against man and their intolerance of each other. — Sylvester Stallone

In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.' — Allen West

See, every hotel in Las Vegas has a gimmick, and the biggest gimmick of all is the Stratosphere Tower, which claims to have 113 floors, although I think they're measuring floors in Las-Vegas-inches, which stretch and contract to fit whatever lie you're trying to sell. — Neal Shusterman

I think you can say anybody uses anything as a gimmick. Is Adele's not having gimmicks her gimmick? It's hard to say, isn't it? Really, I think that everybody has something that people like or that's great about them. — Iggy Azalea

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." ... What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it. — Erica Jong

I often talked to Bing Crosby, and while I liked him, I never understood why he was so popular. To me his voice was just a gimmick. — Hedy Lamarr

God gave me a voice to sing with, and when you have that, what other gimmick is there? — Whitney Houston

I like to think I keep my mind open. When I walk the streets I don't look for anything in particular. I come from a philosophy that believes you shouldn't have preconceived notions - that you don't need a gimmick. That you should just photograph what you react to - what you see. — Elliott Erwitt

As a nation we must understand that the future of our country depends on education. It has to be right up front and cannot be an afterthought. It is so important that it has to be available for everyone, not just available to those that can afford it. Our country never fared better than when the GI Bill paid for the education of our veterans. I'm not necessarily advocating a free lunch; however it should be affordable for everyone! For politicians to start handing out vouchers is just a gimmick that shifts funding from Public Schools to Charter Schools. The first thing that should be considered is "Equal Opportunity for All!" I recognize that not everyone is academically gifted or inspired to seek a degree, so a Vocational Technical education may be a viable option for some. — Hank Bracker

He hit the circuit in 1917 as 'Frank Fay, Nut Monologist,' and resistance was immediate. Variety critically stated, 'Fay needs a good straight man, as before, to feed his eccentric comedy.' A comedian standing alone onstage? Unheard of. Doesn't this guy know anything about showbiz? To stand still and tell jokes was a foreign move. To perform without some kind of gimmick was considered amateurish. — Kliph Nesteroff

The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural. — Michael Heizer

February days are a marketing gimmick; love happens every day. — Randeep Hooda

I've never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I've wanted the music to do that. — Taylor Swift

A so-called 'blackout' is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals, — Christopher Dodd

I don't really have a gimmick or a 'thing.' I'm one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day. — Drake

Everybody is designing magic iPhone apps that do things that are really, really beautiful, but a really important thing about magic is that the gimmick has to be ugly. — Penn Jillette

Rule No. 1 is you can't be fake. If you're fake, you become a gimmick and you're selling a gimmick; a little gimmick is cool, this is entertainment. But when you base your stuff on mostly real stuff, you never run out of it because every day is a different adventure. — Nas

Your skin starts itching once you buy that gimmick about something called love. — Iggy Pop

You've seen one gimmick, you've seen them all, — Terrell Suggs

I tried to point out that it's not a gimmick to teach patients suffering with OCD that their intrusive thoughts and urges are caused by brain imbalances, and that we now know they can physically alter those imbalances through mindfulness and self-directed behavioral therapy techniques. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Most restaurants in most cities, including Washington, are at a sort of mid-level. They're somewhat trendy, or they have some sort of gimmick, or they're somewhat expensive. And they make a lot of money off drinks. I tell people don't go to most of them, unless your goal is just to socialize. — Tyler Cowen

My direction has never really changed, because I don't think that you can really work gimmicks in gospel music. With gospel music, there is this central theme that always comes around about the love of God, the love of Jesus and the power that you have through Jesus Christ. You don't need a gimmick when you have that. — Yolanda Adams

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world
in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind
can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil. — Brian W. Aldiss

It's real simple - we all have nightmares, and the idea you can be in real jeopardy in them is a great gimmick. It's universal. — Robert Englund

If you look at the state of our planet, the next generations won't be around if we consider sustainability as a gimmick. — Jochen Zeitz

John Kerry's newfound interest in fiscal discipline is a political gimmick that defies his 20-year record in the Senate and stands in stark contrast to his reckless and expansive promises of new government spending on the campaign trail. — Steve Schmidt

Ultimate Warrior had a hell of a gimmick, but wrestling is about so much more than that. You have to be consistent, work main events every night and have matches that people really believe in and want to see. — Hulk Hogan

I hate the things they preach. They found a gimmick that sells. The fact that they're making money off all these teenage kids who actually believe in their message is disgusting. — Christina Ricci

When I grew up in the early '90s, the new World Wide Web felt like a gimmick, and I had no idea of the changes in store. In the summers, I'd backpack through Europe, follow the Grateful Dead. I had a car and a tent and traveled around the Great Lakes and out West. Jack Kerouac was my guiding light, his 'On the Road' a sacred text. — Tony D'Souza

Lionel Essrog, the twitching, barking, gabbling narrator of Jonathan Lethem's new novel, 'Motherless Brooklyn,' is no movie-of-the-week novelty grafted onto a noir mystery. Maybe his Tourette's is a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with depth, with soul. — Gary Krist

I don't believe that Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or any damn picture that you can name, would be better off in 3D. I think it's a gimmick. I find 3D distracting. — William Friedkin

Do you still believe i public opinion? Well let me tell you public opinion is a gimmick thought up by the English and Americans, it's them who are shitting us up with this public opinion rot, of you'll excuse my language, we've never had their political system, we don't have their traditions, we don't even know what trade unions are, we're a southern people and we obey whoever shouts the loudest and gives the orders. — Tabucci, Antonio

The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different than wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. — Chuck Klosterman

It might work in the short term, but it's not going to keep the people who hop from congregation to congregation. Church is about one's relationship with God and one's relationship with people. The gimmick may attract you for the moment, but it's the substance that will hold you there. — J. Gordon Melton

People regard CGI as a gimmick; they almost blame CGI for a bad story or a bad script. They talk about CGI as if it's responsible for a drop in standards. — Peter Jackson

There are so many stories to tell in the worlds of science fiction, the worlds of fantasy and horror that to confine yourself to even doing historical revisionist fiction, whatever you want to call it - mash-ups, gimmick lit, absurdist fiction - I don't know if I want to do that anymore. — Seth Grahame-Smith

Stop thinking "Outside the box" and look what is actually in the box first. You jump around from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick without a clear plan or goal, hoping to reproduce someone else's success without understanding all of the nuances and factors that went into that success. Further, people are so busy recreating the wheel that they have forgotten what the wheel looks like. — Julie Ann Dawson

People are mistaken to view cinema as some sort of gimmick. It's very much ingrained in the ways in which we understand each other. — Nicolas Roeg

If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences. — Henry Hazlitt

Aesthetic and utilitarian considerations aside," I said, "Those mittens don't particularly make sense. Why would you want to hitchhike to the North Pole? Isn't the whole gimmick of Christmas that there's home delivery? You get up there, all you're going to find is a bunch of exhausted, grumpy elves. Assuming, of course, that you accept the mythical presence of a workshop up there, when we all know there isn't even a pole at the North Pole, and if global warming continues, there won't be any ice, either."
"Why don't you just fuck off?" the woman replied. Then she took her mittens and got out of there. — Rachel Cohn

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success. — Rex Reed

I feel like the high-concept shows that have some kind of gimmick tend not to be the hit classic shows of all time. — Mindy Kaling

No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway. — William Bernbach

This gimmick makes it possible for citizens to raise and decide issues directly. They won't have to wait for the Council to verbalize a measure. Any citizen can transmit his will with one of these, make his needs register on a central control that automatically responds. When a large enough segment of the population wants a certain thing done, these little gadgets set up an active field that touches all the others. An issue won't have to go through a formal Council. The citizens can express their will long before any bunch of gray-haired old men could get around to it. — Anonymous

What's when you rap and don't appreciate the art?
What's when you sell out just to get a start?
What's when you make bullshit just for the charts?
What's when you rap, but it's not from the heart?
What's when you're hardcore, then you turn pop?
When you steal ideas to get props?
When you sell out to be on top?
What's when you front like you're hard, but you're not?
That's a gimmick. — Lord Finesse

The Orgasmic Death Gimmick is rather complicated. It could be called the whole birth-death cycle of action, persuading people that birth and death are realities. — William S. Burroughs

The world is nothing but a big gimmick. — Jimi Hendrix

The underlying strategy of the Fed is to tell people, "Do you want your money to lose value in the bank, or do you want to put it in the stock market?" They're trying to push money into the stock market, into hedge funds, to temporarily bid up prices. Then, all of a sudden, the Fed can raise interest rates, let the stock market prices collapse and the people will lose even more in the stock market than they would have by the negative interest rates in the bank. So it's a pro-Wall Street financial engineering gimmick. — Michael Hudson

I don't see us as a big media gimmick band. We don't have a cultivated appearance or anything like Kiss. — Tom Verlaine

My own sense and taste in 3D films has been I don't really like it when it feels like it's a gimmick and it's coming at me, it's flying at me. — James Mangold

There's a lot of gimmick infringement out there, but that's cool. It's a compliment. But it all started right when I first came into the Garden. I came down to 'Eye of the Tiger' and when I hit the ring with the Sheik, I just put my hand up to my ear by accident, and the crowd got louder. I was like 'Oh, that works.' — Hulk Hogan

I don't make films that are easy to market, unfortunately. I think that 'Pi' was the easiest one, because we had that symbol to stick up everywhere, so that was a good gimmick, and created a good mystery, and we didn't have to do huge scale. — Darren Aronofsky

I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement. — Raymond Carver

When you're in business, if you have some sort of gimmick it's a huge advantage. — Barbara Corcoran

You may well ask how I expect to assert my privacy by resorting to the outrageous publicity of being one's actual self on paper. There's a possibility of it working if one chooses the terms, to wit: outshouting image-gimmick America through a quietly desperate search for self. — Kate Millett

This is deeply disturbing. Congress provided loans to help businesses hurt by the Sept. 11 attacks, not to be used as an accounting gimmick to cover up this administration's failure to provide for small businesses. — John F. Kerry

I didnt get arrested to show off my wild character. People say its a gimmick for all five of us to be different. Thats ridiculous. — Donnie Wahlberg

Even to current-events junkies, the notion of a 24-hour news channel sounded like a gimmick when the Cable News Network launched more than 30 years ago. — Steve Erickson

I think it[3D] should be used as a new artistic form, not as a gimmick, not to impress you but the existence of an environment that you view as a theatrical dramatic experience is - you don't just have the X-Y axis, you have the Z and that makes a difference. You still have the framing, you still use lenses, so most of the cinematic rules and languages still apply but I think it's a different existence. — Ang Lee

Now the line is: Forget the classics, concentrate on an education for the 21st century! Which apparently means knowing how to operate electronic devices and figure out a spreadsheet. That's not education, it's vocational training. What once were means seem to have become ends in education. And our more with-it "educators" shift with every passing wind, clutching at the latest gimmick the way drowning men do at straws. — Paul Greenberg

Gas tax holiday is a classic Washington gimmick. — Barack Obama

You gotta have a gimmick. — Ethel Merman

Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with 'The Jazz Singer' or the first colour or surround sound - it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it. — John Lasseter

In the 1970s, there was a trend for all detectives on TV to have some quirk or gimmick, and this was often physical. — Mark Billingham