One of the most popular articles we’ve ever published at InnoLead is Dan Wheeler’s collection of the 25 best anti-innovation quotes of all time.
With the holiday movie-going season upon us, we assembled a list of anti-innovation quotes from notable Hollywood executives, inventors, and directors — just to show that no industry is without its nay-sayers who can clearly and rationally explain why change will never arrive.
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1. “If we put out a screen machine, there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines, you could show the pictures to everyone in the country — and then it would be done. Let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”
— Thomas Edison on movie projectors
(At the time, Edison had a thriving business making viewing devices called Kinetoscopes, which showed movies to one person at a time.)
2. “I wouldn’t give a dime for all the possibilities of [motion pictures with sound]. The public will never accept it.”
— Kodak founder George Eastman
3. “…[S]ound is a passing fancy. It won’t last.”
— MGM exec Irving Thalberg, after seeing “The Jazz Singer” in 1927
The talkies are still with us in 2025, making them the most enduring passing fancy of all time.
4. “I do not believe that black and white will disappear entirely. It will still be the ideal medium for certain subjects, not merely for newsreels and shorts, but for full-length pictures.”
— Rouben Mamoulian, director of one of the first three-strip Technicolor movies, “Becky Sharp”
5. “Films made expressly for theatrical distribution should not be funneled into television, nor should big-name personalities be encouraged to appear too frequently on video, because the public will tire of seeing them and thus their pictures will suffer at the box office.”
— A group of thirty Hollywood producers and cinema owners, 1951
Turns out that putting celebs on Fallon, Kimmel, or Saturday Night Live actually helps ticket sales.
6. “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”
— Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, 1982
Within a decade of that statement, studios were making more money from home video than from movie ticket sales.
7. “…[W]ithout even knowing what’s happening, audiences might gradually absorb that the digital images they’re watching in theaters are no different than what they see at home, that they’re actually just watching TV with more people. And that could be the end of movies as we know them.”
— Variety film critic Todd McCarthy, writing about digital projection in 1999
8. “…Digital technologies can enable a level of piracy that would undermine our capacity to produce films and entertainment, undermine deployment of broadband networks, undermine the digital television transition, and ultimately result in fewer choices and options for American consumers.”
— Disney chairman Michael Eisner, speaking to Congress in 2002
It’s true: content piracy was a serious risk, but Eisner neglected to note that digital technologies have also radically reduced Disney’s costs of distributing content to consumers and to theaters. And in 2024, Disney raked in $10 billion of revenue from its streaming service, Disney Plus.
9. “There are great cinematographers who’ll shoot on film for the next twenty years.”
— Bob Beitcher, chief executive of the camera manufacturer Panavision, 2006
Though Panavision has been a pioneer of digital cinematography with cameras like the Genesis, its bigger business at the time was renting high-end film cameras. By 2012, more movies were being shot digitally than on film.
10. “Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube.”
— Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, 2007
In 2024, Forbes estimated that many popular YouTubers, including Mr. Beast, are earning more than $10 million a year.
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