Gimmick Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The inexperienced reader wants the essentially familiar combined with superficial novelty. Each story must have a slightly new setting or twist or "gimmick," though the fundamental features of the characters and situations remain the same. He evaluates a story not by its truth but by its twists and turns and surprises, by its suspense or its love interest. He wants his stories to be mainly pleasant. Evil, danger, and misery may appear in them, but not in such a way that they need be taken really seriously or are felt to be oppressive or permanent. He wants reading that slips easily and smoothly through his mind, requiring little mental effort. Most of all, he wants something that helps sustain his fantasy life, providing ready-made daydreams in which he overcomes his limitations, thwarts his enemies, and wins success or fame or the girl. ~ Laurence Perrine

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

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 don't like 3D. I don't believe there is any film that I have seen and loved that would have been improved by a scintilla in 3D. To me, it's just a gimmick. ~ William Friedkin

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

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

'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

Science fiction shows are traditionally about the gimmick or the gadget and tend to be emotionally cool to the touch. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do photographers start giving numbers to their prints? It's absurd. What do you do when the 20th print has been done? Do you swallow the negative? Do you shoot yourself? It's the gimmick of money. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2-D movie works as well as the 3-D movie. I want to make sure that people like the 2-D version. It's not a gimmick. It actually improves the viewing experience, but the movie stands on its own. ~ Louis Leterrier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You gotta have a gimmick. ~ Ethel Merman

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

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

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

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 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

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

Jack Crawford heard the rhythm and syntax of his own speech in Graham's voice. He had heard Graham do that before, with other people. Often in intense conversation Graham took on the other person's speech patterns. At first, Crawford had thought he was doing it deliberately, that it was a gimmick to get the back-and-forth rhythm going.
Later Crawford realized that Graham did it involuntarily, that sometimes he tried to stop and couldn't. ~ Thomas Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

Why kid ourselves, people have nothing to say to one another, they all talk about their own troubles and nothing else. Each man for himself, the earth for us all. They try to unload their unhappiness on someone else when making love, they do their damnedest, but it doesn't work, they keep it all, and then they start all over again, trying to find a place for it. "Your pretty, Mademoiselle," they say. And life takes hold of them again until the next time, and then they try the same little gimmick. "You're very pretty, Mademoiselle..."

And in between they boast that they've succeeded in getting rid of their unhappiness, but everyone knows it's not true and they've simply kept it all to themselves. Since at the little game you get uglier and more repulsive as you grow older, you can't hope to hide your unhappiness, your bankruptcy, any longer. In the end your features are marked with that hideous grimace that takes twenty, thrity years or more to climb form your belly to your face. That's all a man is good for, that and no more, a grimace that he takes a whole lifetime to compose. The grimace a man would need to express his true soul without losing any of it is so heavy and complicated that he doesn't always succeed in completing it. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

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

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

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

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

If you are going to be a big personality, you've got to have some kind of characteristic gimmick. ~ Farley Mowat

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

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

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

It wasn't like I just woke up and said, 'Here's my gimmick; I'll wear a hat and put something weird on it.' ~ Judah Friedlander

All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background. ~ Bobby Vinton

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

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