Career Quotes

The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk. ~ Mark Helprin

He was beautiful.
Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge.
He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring.
Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes.
Good-he wasn't looking at me.
I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him…
…and saw a picture of me, fast asleep.
It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn't look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me?
Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still.
"You can keep pretending to be asleep if you'd like, but I don't see a career for you as an actres ~ Hilary Duff

It's not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp. ~ Susan Cain

Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality. ~ Barbara Oakley

Bobby Cox had the biggest influence in my career and probably the second- or third-biggest influence in my life. ~ Tom Glavine

I've been through periods of stress, turbulence in the market for over the course of my career, various times, and never in any of those other periods have we had the advantage of a strong economy underpinning the markets. ~ Henry Paulson

I gave everything in my career so I have no regrets at all. ~ Michel Patini

So if you hear something in this book that sounds like advocacy of a particular political point of view, please reject the notion. My interest in issues is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better.
Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they ought to be. And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem.
My motto: Fuck Hope.
P.S. In case you're wondering, personally I'm a joyful individual, I had a long happy marriage and a close and loving family, my career has turned out better than I ever dreamed, and it continues to expand. I'm a personal optimist, but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger, is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism–the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.
And P.P.S., by the way, if by some chance you folks do manage to straighten things out and make everything better, I still don't wish to be included. ~ George Carlin

Early in my career, I decided I never wanted to get out of shape. ~ Cal Ripken, Jr.

After the allied victory of 1918, at the end of my father's war, the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career - in Belfast and Sarajevo, in Beirut and Baghdad - watching the people within those borders burn. ~ Robert Fisk

When I began my career as a writer I thought it would be fun to put my imagination to the page. Now I am finding out that my imagination is able to fill in those pesky holes called details all on its own, and then neglecting to tell me how it did it. ~ Jonathan Bender

I think the World Cup is going to be bigger than what a lot of people are anticipating. At this stage in my career, when there is an opportunity, albeit a small one, of being on the team, what a great way to possibly end my career. ~ Al Leiter

I don't know, man. Look at me. I've changed. I've grown up. I've got a job, got a career ... I drink coffee now. ~ Bret McKenzie

Speaking for myself, but [Kriota] probably [agrees], I don't do different things because I have to, but certainly my career's taken a lot of twists and turns because things work out for a while and then something shifts and they don't. I went into illustration as a way of supporting my comics career. Then I got really interested in performance and I knew that was always going to be more of a hobby, but that's something I've kept doing. ~ Robert Sikoryak

I'm not lazy, but I don't have that spur on my ass that most people have, like, "Oh, god. I have to get something out or else my career will be over!" I don't really care if my career is over. ~ Fiona Apple

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. ~ Tom Glavine

The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive and leave an indelible stamp upon his race. ~ Samuel Smiles

Later that year I happened to read a book by Dr. Neil Fiore that validated Bill's suspicion about being too careful. The book was called The Now Habit and was about overcoming procrastination. Dr. Fiore suggested that succeeding in a career is not unlike walking on a tightrope. The more success we achieve, the higher the rope. As we gain something, we have more to lose. Success causes a ravine beneath our careers that grows more deadly, creating a kind of fear of trying. He said the fear of letting people down is one of the primary reasons people procrastinate. ~ Donald Miller

Many people fail in their career, business and relationship, and others get stuck because of their inability to make quality decisions. ~ Nkem Paul

'Bionic Woman' really enriched my career. It was a big, amazing thing to do. ~ Michelle Ryan

As I look back now on my coaching career, I think of my family, I think of the days that we spent together. I say this to coaches everywhere: If you ever have a chance to take your kids with you, take them. Don't miss that opportunity. Because when it's all over and done with, when you look back, those are going to be your fondest memories. ~ John Madden

I have never reached certain levels of fame, like Lindsay Lohan did, or even Brittany Murphy. My career has always been this sort of even-keeled, steady existence. I was also raised by poets, and I've been doing poetry as long as I've been acting. ~ Amber Tamblyn

I want to get to a point in my career where I can be a role model. A good one. I want to say, 'I got here without drugs, and I got here without drinking or smoking. If I can do it, you can do it. I have no doubt.' I really want kids to have a chance in life. ~ Chad Michael Murray

That first group of Manchester players allowed me to enjoy coaching at a very young age that motivated me to do it. If it wasn't good, I might have made a career change. ~ Steve Alford

The most important thing is to understand that this career is not about speed. It's about stamina. This is a marathon. It's not a 50-meter sprint. You have to persevere and understand it takes a lot of time. You have to know you're going to knock on 100 doors and 99 of them are going to close in your face. ~ Jaime Camil

I made theater very important in the beginning of my career. ~ Marcello Mastroianni

Desperation works in job search as well as it does in dating. ~ Darrell Gurney

I was a child with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and remember enjoying all of my courses almost equally. When it came time at the end of my high school career to choose a major in which to specialize, I was in a quandary. ~ Gertrude B. Elion

decade after the first edition of this book was published, Yan Wong and I met in the fitting surroundings of the Oxford Museum of Natural History to discuss the possibility of producing a new, tenth anniversary edition. Yan, once my undergraduate pupil, had been employed as my research assistant during the writing of the original edition, before he left for his lecturing position in Leeds and his career as a television presenter. He played an enormously important part in the conception and execution of the first edition, and he was credited as joint author of several of the chapters. During the course of our discussion ten years on, we realised that much new information had come in, especially from the molecular genetics laboratories of the world. Yan undertook the bulk of the revision and I proposed to the publisher that this time he should be properly credited as joint author of the whole book. ~ Richard Dawkins

I never could have planned this, and now I'm in my ideal situation career-wise and just sort of where I am in my life, and I'm super happy with how everything's going. ~ Shawn Ashmore

Do Love your career as you do SEX for a lifetime pleasure! ~ Mohith Agadi

Your career doesn't define you ~ Lili Wilkinson

Me: Now I understand why a guy can give up his freedom and shackle himself to one girl and spend the rest of his life working at a job he hates just to support the girl's offspring and then he dies, the end.

Susie: Yeah, and now I understand why a girl can give up her freedom and shackle herself to one guy and ruin her body giving birth to the guy's offspring and put her career on hold and not realize her dreams of travel so she can cook and clean and raise the offspring of the guy and then she dies, the end. ~ Martine Leavitt

In my whole career, in fact, I can remember only two first nights when a show was at its peak on the first night. And I just wish we could devise a system where critics came not on a single evening but were given a choice of performances to attend. ~ Richard McCabe

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children ... But the majority of men did not share the load at home. Some refused outright. Others refused more passively, often offering a loving shoulder to lean on, an understanding ear as their working wife faced the conflict they both saw as hers. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

I try not to do the fantasy thing. If I didn't get hurt, what would I be? Who knows? When I look back on my career, from the hard work I put in, I got everything I deserved. ~ Gilbert Arenas

I felt Brighton was a perfect ending to a really interesting career. ~ Harold Budd

It's more pressure on women to - if they marry or partner with someone, to partner with the right person. Because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with your children if you are also doing all of the housework and child care. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

When I look at that now, all I think about is what a master [David Fincher] I was working with, and all of the things I could have watched and learned - and I didn't. And how, now, in my career, how I would love to have a ton of takes. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

I am happy with everything I achieved in my football career. I don't think I could have done any more. ~ Ruud Gullit

I was very immersed in the world. I'm very worldly. I love world. I was immersed in my career, in school, in teaching. ~ Frederick Lenz

Go ahead then. Might as well wipe your ass with a doomed office romance before you flush your career down the toilet. You know it'll happen. ~ Claire Gillian

[Meeting Mandela] was the highlight of my career; to meet such a great man and a strong man and such a passionate man about sport and life will always stay with me. ~ David Beckham

Joaquin Jackson's frank and colorful account of his long career as a modern-day Texas Ranger thrills like an action novel, yet the stories are true, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but always gripping. I could hardly put the book down ... The writing is superb. ~ Elmer Kelton

Ten years ago a book appeared in France called D'Une foi l'autre, les conversions a l'Islam en Occident. The authors, both career journalists, carried out extensive interviews with new Muslims in Europe and America. Their conclusions are clear. Almost all educated converts to Islam come in through the door of Islamic spirituality. In the middle ages, the Sufi tariqas were the only effective engine of Islamisation in Muslim minority areas like Central Asia, India, black Africa and Java; and that pattern is maintained today.

Why should this be the case? Well, any new Muslim can tell you the answer. Westerners are in the first instance seeking not a moral path, or a political ideology, or a sense of special identity - these being the three commodities on offer among the established Islamic movements. They lack one thing, and they know it - the spiritual life. Thus, handing the average educated Westerner a book by Sayyid Qutb, for instance, or Mawdudi, is likely to have no effect, and may even provoke a revulsion. But hand him or her a collection of Islamic spiritual poetry, and the reaction will be immediately more positive. It is an extraordinary fact that the best-selling religious poet in modern America is our very own Jalal al-Din Rumi. Despite the immeasurably different time and place of his origin, he outsells every Christian religious poet.

Islam and the New Millennium ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, on the 15th October, 1856, so that he is now about twenty-six years of age, but brief as has been his career, it has been full of promise for the future. The son of highly intellectual parents, he has had an exceptional education, has travelled much in wild and remote, through classic lands, and in the course of these journeys has learnt to appreciate the beauties of the old authors, in whose works whilst at college he attained exceptional proficiency. But his naturally enthusiastic temperament teaches him to hope for better in the future than has been achieved in the past, and to see how vast will be the influence of Art and Literature on the coming democracy of Intellect, when education and culture shall have taught men to pride themselves on what they have done, and not alone on the deeds of their ancestors. ~ Walter Hamilton

Not all residents could stand the pressure. One was simply unable to accept blame or responsibility. He was a talented surgeon, but he could not admit when he'd made a mistake. I sat with him one day in the lounge as he begged me to help him save his career. "All you have to do," I said, "is look me in the eye and say "I'm sorry. What happened is my fault, and I won't let it happen again. " "But it was the nurse who---" "No. You have to be able to say it and mean it. Try again." "But---." "No. Say it." This went on for an hour before I knew he was doomed. ~ Paul Kalanithi

I've never been able to tell jokes. In the beginning of my career I did impressions and jokes like any other comedian, but I was never very successful because I did it poorly. So I started to talk to the audience and started talking about the atmosphere around me and started to become angry, not in a mean-spirited way, but in a fun way - and my attitude developed from there. ~ Don Rickles

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces. ~ Archie Panjabi

I had spent my entire career not wanting to talk about weight, not wanting to deal with it, wanting to be an actor first. ~ Sara Rue

I think there's no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people's lives and improve the world. ~ Jack Lew

My career at Warner Brothers consisted of one musical short subject. I was running around in a bear skin. Very chic. ~ Ethel Merman

There was a time when I was fighting with the decision as to whether or not a Hasidic man could go out and have a music career in the world and be involved in pop culture. For me, I was able to bring those two things together for quite some time. ~ Matisyahu

In college, I won the Irene Ryan; it's kind of like a collegiate Tony, which got my career going. I was honored. I won a fellowship to the Kennedy Center, and that's where I got my agent. ~ Zachary Knighton

During my addled career as a trout fisherman I have gone on a lot of wild-goose chases, and I ruefully expect to go on a lot more before I hang up my waders ~ John D. Voelker

For those of us with introverted tendencies, many think that hard work and good results is what matters most. It would be great if that were the case, but it's wrong to believe that to be true. Superb performance on the job is important, but if you don't have a supportive network, you're in for some big disappointments. We speak to people continuously who suffer from the missing component of good networking in their career path. Those people find that their missed opportunities or promotions are demoralizing and certainly frustrating. ~ Dorothy Tannahill-Moran

We live in Los Angeles, where you are expected to move every two to four years, so people can see how well your career is going. ~ Rita Rudner

It's hard to know really how it's going to happen, but the career ebbs and flows and now there's a nicer feeling of interest than there has been at other times. ~ Gretchen Mol

I started my career wanting to make a 'James Bond' movie, and I couldn't get hired! I made 'The Bourne Identity,' and ultimately the impact of that film was that it changed the 'James Bond' franchise. ~ Doug Liman

New York is a city short on patience, cleanliness, clement weather, and citizens who hold faint opinions. It is not a city short of people trying to make a career of being famous, no matter what the opportunity. ~ Libba Bray

One of the detectives was later heard to comment that Perry Reed was officially in more trouble than any other single human being he'd ever encountered in the course of his entire career.... ~ John Connolly

It's a sign of this film's greatness that the enormous sadness that accompanies the final leave-taking of the circus interior is a good deal more than the conclusion of an unpretentious evening's entertainments; it's a sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of this century's greatest artists. ~ Jonathan Rosenbaum

The NFL has done a great job in giving players information on how to go to a second career after football and how to invest their money while they're playing to ensure when their career is over, that they have something else in place to fall back on. One of the big things the NFL does is promote education in different fields. ~ Kamerion Wimbley

After doing this, going away, trying other things and working on other shows, this character, and working within Days of Our Lives, has been one of the most enjoyable experiences in my career. ~ Matthew Ashford

Loving music had pushed all of us off the track- away from the normal pursuit of career, mate, and family, on an endless quest for that vibrating high, the plunge beyond time that comes only when you submerge yourself beneath the waterline of amplified sound. We were addicts, in a way, but also adept, enlightened by a noise most people considered no more than a pleasant distraction. What was left for us but to practice our art of listening? ~ Ann Powers

One of the unexpected and wonderfully fair things I have learned in my career is that if Hollywood were filled just with perfect-looking people, then soap operas would be the most-watched things in the world. But they're not. Looks are great, but they're not compelling enough. I've noticed that successful actors with long careers are usually talented actors with charismatic screen presences, and all of them exude one thing: confidence. ~ Mindy Kaling

Energy = Future = Power = Money = Career = Recycling (E = R). ~ Mehmet Kececi

I'd never imagined myself in a band. So the fact that I've had such a long career without really naturally pursuing it is really astounding. It's taken me a long time to accept what I do for a living and actually feel like I have anything of value to add to the equation. ~ Shirley Manson

I worked 10 years as a toy designer before I started my career as a fashion designer. It's something I just fell into and really liked. ~ Jason Wu

There are a lot of actors who don't like reality stars 'cause they feel these people aren't accomplished. They haven't done this or that, but they are savvy. They have found a way to make it work. I could dissect your career all day long, but I'm focused on my own career. ~ Niecy Nash

That taught me one lesson which is that you're naive to believe that bands can change the world. Bands are very naive to think that just if their audience thinks that they can change the world, that they can. That was quite a lesson for my career, really. ~ Billy Bragg

It's not what you achieve, it's what you overcome. That's what defines your career. ~ Carlton Fisk

Serena and I have done some great career planning, and we're playing really at the peak of our tennis right now. I think tennis has been a sport where people play this insane schedule from 14 years old, so of course at 26, it's over. We've really paced ourselves. ~ Venus Williams

A man can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I started to make some commercials, which was a way for me to finally make a living at last. But it was only really a couple of films in that it looked like a viable career option. ~ Lenny Abrahamson

When my mother wanted to teach me a lesson about life,' said Luca Dotti, 'she never used stories about her career. She always told stories about the war. The war was very, very important to her. It made her who she was. ~ Robert Matzen

I am strongly pro-life, and have fought to protect the rights of the unborn my entire career. I will continue to fight for this cause because I value the sanctity of all human life. ~ Rob Bishop

I like being a mother, and I want to be involved in my work, so I have to make choices. If you're a film actress, your career is from 20 to 45, but you can still dream. ~ Juliette Binoche

He's a family man and a businessman. He spent his career building successful companies. Then, he saved the 2002 Olympics and brought pride to our nation. As governor, he balanced the budget, cut taxes, and created jobs. The president America needs is Mitt Romney! ~ Reince Priebus

Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have talent, perseverance, patience, but without luck you will not have a successful career. ~ Bryan Cranston

The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance against the commonplace of life. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I'm not sure at all that I'm any good at this mentoring/investing business - that's why I'm using my own money, and that's why it's not a career. ~ Jerry Yang

I had a wonderful and very successful career in New York and had the privilege of working with some of the best editors and publishers in the business. ~ Teresa Medeiros

I wanted this new career to provide opportunity to integrate my rational, intuitive, and emotional parts in a cohesive way. ~ Matt Wolf

I'd come to this island, lost and alone, ready to give up on just about everything – my career, my future, and everything in between.
Millie, this smart, sassy woman, had breathed life back into me. ~ J.L. Berg

It's a long journey, filled with highs and lows, but if we find something we love doing and are able to create a way to do it for the rest of our lives, it's all worth it. ~ Kio Briggs

If somebody asked me to come up with a mental image of my hockey career, there is absolutely no doubt I would be wearing the uniform of the Vancouver Canucks in it. ~ Trevor Linden

At the end of the day, TV is my first love. I started off my career from the small screen. ~ Malaika Arora Khan

The fans know and the Cardinals know that I want to be a Cardinal for my whole career. I love this city. The way that this city has embraced me and my family. ~ Albert Pujols

For me, at least, all of my career goals, all of my focus, everything just shifted and the importance was my children, and that's where all the joy came from as well. ~ Steve Carell

I feel like a lot of people are very career-driven and there's pressure to be successful. You put off relationships. You put off those intimate relationships because you're just work-driven. It's a very sweet term, undateable. ~ Mickey Sumner

It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage. ~ Win Butler

I'm not going to wallow in self-pity and not live my life. There are always going to be some falls in life for everybody, no matter what career you have. You have to roll with the punches and keep going. ~ Naomi Campbell

I can't say that I pursued a career. I really didn't, it just sort of happened. ~ Angela Lansbury

I would be hard-pressed to look back at anything that I have done in my career and not say, 'I would have done that a little different' because hindsight is 20/20. ~ Sam Huntington

The word career is a divisive word. It's a word that divides the normal life from business or professional life. ~ Grace Paley

My career is media. One can turn on the TV or look at a magazine and see me. ~ Leryn Franco

Gisele Bundchen I always admired. I think she is an example for all models. If I could have just a little bit of her career would already be a happy girl. She seems to be a determined woman, a fighter, very strong. I think she is an icon of Brazilian people. Gisele is a woman who is extremely inspiring, not only in the fashion world, she also does great things for the world. ~ Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish. ~ Nora Roberts