Top 1019 Blank Slate Quotes & Sayings

There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.

Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I've been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop.

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.

I've heard some designers talk about the design process being centred on invention, starting with a blank slate. I admire that and occasionally I'm capable of that, but I have to admit that I really have trouble working with completely open briefs.

The great appeal of the doctrine that the mind is a blank slate is the simple mathematical fact that zero equals zero.

Having a blank slate is sometimes as daunting as it is exciting.

You want, in a sense, to relate to the main character, so often, the main character POV is a bit more of a blank slate.

There's a brief moment when you first wake up, where you have no memories. A blissful blank slate, a happy emptiness.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

I probably shouldn't say this about all animals, but at least the farm animals that I've hung out with, and even when I go to the zoo usually, they're like a blank slate. I guess that's why I like them. They're puppets, and you can imagine them being anything you want.

We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.

I brought my personality to HQ. I injected my DNA into this thing. They gave me a blank slate to work with.

It was a lot of fun to play a character [in Swiss Army Man] with no inhibitions, and with no knowledge of the world, and who comes into the world kind of like a blank slate. It means there's no template or blueprint for how you need to play certain scenes.

Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.

Whenever people tell you they are going to wipe the slate clean, it's your slate they mean to wipe.

A lot of the fear about being a first-time director is just starting with a completely blank slate and thinking: 'Is this going to connect with anybody?'

The religion that has transformed Western civilization for two millennia is a blank slate for liberals. Their closest reference point is conservative Christians, meaning people you're not supposed to hire. And these are the people who carp about George Bush's alleged lack of intellectual curiosity.

For me, actresses are constantly chameleons, and so they are taking a backseat to their own personality. I don't feel like we're trying to show off their personality as much as let them be a blank slate. It's precisely the reason why I dress more musicians than I do actresses.

I think there's an initial shedding of the skin of a character when you've played them for so long, almost like a snake losing its skin. But when a job is done, I kind of walk away from it because I know that I need to prep for whatever else I'm going onto - I need to get back to being myself, which... Who knows exactly who that is, with all the talking voices in my head. You know, back to being a bit of a blank slate again. It becomes a necessity as an actor - at least for the way that I act.

My mind is changing all the time. I can't live in a space that has a fixed aesthetic. I just need a blank slate when I come home.

Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.

As a composer, every project begins with either a blank sequence or a blank manuscript and for the first couple of days you cover and experience every emotion under the sun. Fear being the main one.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.

You can sit in front of a computer and have a blank slate and be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and not get anywhere.

The writing process is the time where nothing's been set in stone. It's a blank slate, or a blank page.

A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you're planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.

The desert is an ideal illusion of a blank slate - so much mystery in endless layers is hidden underneath its bright, pseudo-sterile surface.

As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities.

I like... piecing things together because it gives you a product that you would never have come up with just sitting down and writing on a blank slate.

Listen to Your Heart' was a blank slate. Yeah, there was this outside idea of 'Bachelor in Paradise' meets 'A Star Is Born,' but what does that mean? You have to actually define that, make it happen.

My room is cleared. My head is cleared. Earlier, around dawn, I took out the last load of trash. I look around and see what's left. Nothing. There is no more Daelyn Rice. As I was. As I am. Or will become. I'm a blank slate

The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate... is a totalitarian's dream.

Don't get seduced by your own stuff; work hard to keep a blank slate state of mind each time you watch your film.

When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on. Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life. Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices. You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality. They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly.

As African-Americans, we don't start with a blank slate, while other people may. In our position, there's always some sort of stereotype that is being scrutinized or that is being assumed when we come through the curtain.

Regardless of political affiliation most of the policy/media world, as a subset of 'the educated classes' in general, tended to hold a broadly 'blank slate' view of the world mostly uninformed by decades of scientific progress.

Set aside a half hour or an hour to rethink the way you make decisions, the habits you have, the biases you may have. And if you think of things, if you come with a little bit of a blank slate and be willing to acknowledge what you don't know, and you'd be willing to think like a child, I think it'll help not only individuals but society at large.

Thus, true long-term change is brought about not by destructive passion of the moment but by well-reasoned constructive action. Violent shock of Armageddon that leaves nothing in its wake but a blank slate is not a solution, only a postponement of progress.

It's interesting that some people reading the comics see Scott Pilgrim as a blank slate in that they like to imagine themselves as Scott Pilgrim, so it's interesting that there are two kind of schools of thought about the character. One is, like, Scott Pilgrim is awesome. The second is Scott Pilgrim believes himself to be awesome.

I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.

Creativity is always a leap of faith. You're faced with a blank page, blank easel, or an empty stage.

I am a blank slate - therefore I can create anything I want.

Music is the chalk to the blackboard of life. Without it everything is a blank slate

I try and reduce myself to an almost blank slate and hope to God that I am creative.

It is so hard for musicians when they step into acting is they're not coming in as a blank slate, they're coming in with a real set idea of who they are, where they're coming from, what their politics are, what their tastes are.

To love shoes is to love problems. Every season, starting a new collection is my greatest challenge. The blank slate in front of me, starting the process all over again, there is no greater challenge.

I think there is a difference between Slate and Salon. I think we both serve important functions on the Internet. As more and more Websites disappear, I'm thankful Slate is still around because it makes things less lonely.

Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.

The apartment was entirely, was only, for her: a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her not only in themselves, their tender spines, but in the moments or periods they evoked… Her self, then, was represented in her books; her times in her records; and the rest of the room she thought of as a pure, blank slate.

Contrary to what some parents might believe or hope for, children are not born a blank slate. Rather, they come into the world with predetermined abilities, proclivities and temperaments that nurturing parents may be able to foster or modify, but can rarely reverse.

Twitter is an astounding platform for information, but it's a total blank slate - which means it's an astounding platform for disinformation, too.

In the '80s and '90s, China went through a giant change. It needed all resources. At the time, I was in the recycled paper business, and I realized the China market was a blank slate.

Without memories to cloud it, the mind perceives with absolute clarity. Each observation stands out in stark relief. In the beginning, when there's not yet a smudge, the slate still blank, there is only the present moment: each vital detail, shocked color, the fall of light. Like film stills. The mind relentlessly open to the world, deeply impressed, even hurt by it: not yet gauzed by memory.

I got to college and saw all of my friends going to these other schools and thought, 'You know, college is just a blank slate.' And I had an opportunity to go to different schools, but I chose Brown because it was unique and allowed you to be yourself as an individual and like I said, it's a blank slate.

The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

I've never been about trying to promote a brand of Squarepusher. I've never been keen on that idea that these are the character traits that I've got to stick with and amplify and keep pushing forward and pushing on the public. I'm really happy to throw it all away and start each record with a blank slate but I concede you've got a point, there are things I can't get rid of, no matter how hard I try.

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

'Trolls' was a blank slate - there was no world, no mythology. We talked a lot about the Grinch and we liked how they showed his heart growing, but how do you show a photographable device like that for the Bergens? We ended up using color for a lot of that: desaturating and then pulling the saturation up.