Top 100 Great Work Quotes

#1. There's no way that I could do a 9 to 5 job. There's no way. I was not cut out for that. You come in and you work for three months on the one job. They say, 'Great,' you know, and you're on to the next one - and you never even got fired. It's wonderful.

Dennis Quaid

#2. Allow the way to your great work to be guided by your service to others.

Mollie Marti

#3. Antony said to Poemen, 'Our great work is to lay the blame for our sins upon ourselves before God, and to expect to be tempted to our last breath.

Benedicta Ward

#4. It is a great victory if you learn how to survive in today's hard times; it's an even greater victory if you
help someone else survive and find meaningful work.

Richard N. Bolles

#5. I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

Eddie Marsan

#6. Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time ... Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

Swami Vivekananda

#7. I've learned several lessons over the years. First, never take yourself too seriously, or work is boring. Next, people make the difference. You can have great technology, but if it's not complemented by great people, it won't go anywhere. Finally, customers buy from people they like.

John W. Thompson

#8. I've found the 90-10 rule to be pretty true: 90 percent of what I come up with and write down is kinda 'eh,' and then somehow, someway, 10 percent of it happens to work out really great in my act.

Hasan Minhaj

#9. My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

Maya Angelou

#10. Grade A objectivity won't come from those who are closest to us. It will come from outsiders. That's where we'll find divergent thinking, unexpected questions, novel ideas, differences of opinion, and added expertise.

David Sturt

#11. Animation is a great way to work. No early morning call times, no make-up chair. In live action, you're always fighting the clock; the sun is always going down too soon.

John C. Reilly

#12. Chemistry is one of these crazy things you can't teach or learn or you can't fake. You go in hoping it will work, hope that you will connect with the other actors. I was fortunate on 'Modern Family' and 'The Procession.' They are great people, very easy to like.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

#13. When two great minds work in unison, a great deal is accomplished, but there is usually a lot of noise.

Lloyd A. Green

#14. Money doesn't know about clocks, schedules or holidays and you shouldn't either. Money loves people that have great work ethic.

Grant Cardone

#15. I was going through a break up. I was depressed ... I really did need to do something. Recording an album was a great escape. I don't know what would have happened if I wouldn't have started to work.

Damon Albarn

#16. Girls get Screwed. Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things. The way things work, how guys feel great, but make girls feel cheap for doing exactly what they beg for

Ellen Hopkins

#17. The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.

Sandra Cisneros

#18. Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

Balthus

#19. I'm not saving lives. I'm singing and I should go placidly and joyously through the whole thing and work hard and not take it for granted. It's great to have this gift.

Robert Plant

#20. I am heartbroken by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in my home state. Like so many Americans I am watching the news reports with great sadness. But it's at times like these that each of us must work together to provide lifesaving aid to those in terrible need.

Tim McGraw

#21. I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.

Paul Walker

#22. When you work with the same people for 10 years, they become family. Now when I see them - it might not be for nine months - but when I see them, it's great.

Molly Sims

#23. I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.

Al Pacino

#24. Indeed, the real question is not, "Why greatness?" but "What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?" If you have to ask the question, "Why should we try to make it great? Isn't success enough?" then you're probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

James C. Collins

#25. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.

Denis Leary

#26. Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession.

Suzanne Farrell

#27. Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.

Cyril Connolly

#28. I never feel like I've done good enough. That's why I'm always so excited about working because I gotta keep pushing myself to do better work, to do great work.

Bryce Wilson

#29. I think all the knowledge and all the travels that I've done, I'm going to do a lot of great work in the future.

Chris Tucker

#30. When I auditioned for 'Jessie,' I knew that Disney Channel basically will do 100 episodes of a show if it's a hit; they'll stick with something. It's a great network to work with because they make a nice big commitment to a show.

Kevin Chamberlin

#31. A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

Robert Benchley

#32. I'm currently between assignments and was looking for a change. I heard there was work in Nashville and it seemed like a good place to start over. So here I am stuck in the freezing cold with a ... serial killer. Has the making for a great horror movie, huh? (Leta)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#33. As far as One Direction goes, and Mindless Behavior and all the other bands, I'm all for it, and if there's ever an opportunity to work with them, that'd be great.

Nick Jonas

#34. If you have a great day at work and you've been hit with all these great ideas and there's a lot of excitement on your team, your mind doesn't turn off. For years I've kept a pad of paper and pen by me at night, because things just occur to you.

Anne Sweeney

#35. It's not easy working with your husband, I'll be straight up about that. But when we work together, we always get great product. It's not easy in the process and as we go along it gets easier, but yeah, it gets a little sticky.

Jada Pinkett Smith

#36. Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

Steve Ballmer

#37. Work as we know it now is a very recent historical development. It didn't exist before the great agricultural revolutions that made intensive farming possible about twelve thousand years ago.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#38. My friends, if we are going to do a great work for God, we must spend much time in prayer; we have got to be closeted with God.

Dwight L. Moody

#39. For 25 years, it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California; to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class; to secure opportunity and equality.

Nancy Pelosi

#40. He was the man who rode into our valley out of the heart of the great glowing west and when his work was done, he left whence he had come--and he was Shane.

Jack Shaeffer

#41. I'm a great admirer of Primo Levi's work. It's always mind-boggling, the idea of how much pain people can endure and still come back from the edge with a sense of humor, with this tremendous animal desire we have to get on with life.

Allan Gurganus

#42. God's great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be.

Eugene H. Peterson

#43. Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends ... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.

Adam Kluger

#44. Everyone at 'CSI' has been so great to work with, and so great in terms of scheduling. There's a real feeling of family on that set ... I've grown to have so much respect for the cast and crew - they're been together so many years and still care about the show and each other.

Elisabeth Shue

#45. All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.

Roger Bacon

#46. I am driven by great work and seeing people do incredible things and having a part in that.

Tim Cook

#47. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Oscar Wilde

#48. We have great power to affect the attitudes and behavior of the people around us, at work and at home. We have the power to set a tone of honor, to create an energy around ourselves that says, 'I respect myself. I respect you. Let's respect each other.'

Marianne Williamson

#49. God gives much grace for great work.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#50. Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.

Milan Kundera

#51. Coaching isn't a great mystery. It's Just hard work, determination, and inspiration at the right moment.

Robert Zuppke

#52. I work in a medium where I get to be totally invisible and I get great pleasure from that, being a pretty self-conscious person.

Terry Gross

#53. The Gita is not an aphoristic work, it is a great religious poem.

Mahatma Gandhi

#54. I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

Robin Williams

#55. For every person that says, 'I love your work, and my daughter thinks you're great, and we watch all your movies,' and is very kind, there are 10 more that are like, 'Who are you? What's your name? Are you on 'House of Cards'?'

Anna Kendrick

#56. The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I've been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it's definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else's.

Catherine McCormack

#57. A crucial factor when achieving great success in the real estate industry, or any industry for that matter, is teamwork. Unity is a place of power.

Michelle Moore

#58. As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

Edward Weston

#59. People who work for me know that they have a lot of autonomy. I like to know what's going on, and I'll offer my opinion, but I want people to feel that they can say to me, "That's great that you have that opinion, but, no, we're not going to do that."

Harry West

#60. God grant that this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.

Adolf Hitler

#61. Michael Kitchen was a great person to work with. So attentive and just great at what he does and supportive, also.

Gary Carr

#62. People don't change that much. Instead of trying to put in what God left out, try drawing out what God left in!

Curt Coffman

#63. I have found that great people do have in common ... an immense belief in themselves and in their mission. They also have gerat determination as well as an ability to work hard. At the crucial moment of decision, they draw on their accumulated wisdom. Above all, they have integrity.

Yousuf Karsh

#64. Beside every great success are the seeds of enormous failure. In every failure, there's the opportunity seeds of great success. They're not miles apart. So if they're that close together, and if you're really working, you're always gonna have that likelihood that something's not going to work.

Peter Guber

#65. I think it's important for artists to work together. It's great for fans to see, like, Ludacris came out to our show in Atlanta and kinda made a surprise appearance there, it shows a mutual respect for what each other does.

Jason Aldean

#66. I'm very ambitious, musically - I want to create great things, not mediocre work.

James Vincent McMorrow

#67. Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life you give so much to work with, but by the time you've got all this great wisdom, you don't get to be young anymore.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#68. Really in all my years on Tour, in the U.S. Open I probably played great golf in two of them, out of maybe 20, so it's a lot of work.

Fred Couples

#69. In postscript let's just say that I am very fortunate cause I've gotten to work with a lot of great bands!

Jim Diamond

#70. Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.

Ayn Rand

#71. Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.

Richard LaGravenese

#72. The great souls work with great passion.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#73. It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

#74. I wanted to be a part of the first 'Twilight' movie, and unfortunately, it didn't work out so great. So when they came back and were like, 'Do you want to come in for a part for the second movie,' I was like, 'Absolutely.'

Jamie Campbell Bower

#75. The great Tao is universal like a flood ... All creatures depend on it, and it denies nothing to anyone. It does its work, but it makes no claims for itself. It clothes and feeds all, but it does not lord it over them.

Lao-Tzu

#76. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It

Henry Ford

#77. I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.

Ken Burns

#78. ...use design as a secret disguise to infiltrate whatever world you want to go into. If you do that over and over again, and then translate that interest and curiosity into the work that you're doing, you'll do great.

Michael Bierut

#79. I'll probably stick to comedy for the time being. I mean, a great piece of work is a great piece of work, and I'm up for good work anytime. But I do love comedy!

Jenna Elfman

#80. I believe that with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society and a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need.

Bill Gates

#81. I have a general moral: great philosophers may be great, but that is not a reason to follow them. Don't be a follower. Work it out for yourself.

Tim Crane

#82. I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great.

Anne Hathaway

#83. Talking with other artists is an incredible process. You engage with the work very differently ... a nd different relationships between different works start to emerge. To tap into that energy-to tap into that moment-is great for me as an exercise.

Shahzia Sikander

#84. I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.

Joe Rogan

#85. It is the Level-headed Man, the Calm Man, of Good Judgement and cool nerves, of Great sympathy and love, who does good work and so does good to himself.

Swami Vivekananda

#86. It's almost sad that it's something that's just associated with stripping or because someone is slutty. That's really not it. It's actually a really great way to get a work-out and to build upper body strength and to have fan.

Megalyn Echikunwoke

#87. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

E. M. Forster

#88. Space and silence weigh equally upon the heart. A sudden love, a great work, a decisive act, a thought which transfigures, all these at certain moments bring the same unbearable anxiety, linked with an irresistible charm.

Albert Camus

#89. Honestly, we'd probably be great parents. But it's a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility - I wouldn't want to screw them up! We love our animals.

Ellen DeGeneres

#90. 'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.

Dario Argento

#91. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#92. My only real requirement is that I like the projects to be good and I like the people that I work with to be really nice people and great people, and as long as that's the case the music is fun to do always.

Christopher Lennertz

#93. I have a great work ethic - from watching Lucille Ball, not necessarily my own family.

Jenny Lewis

#94. Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.

Austin Kleon

#95. There are a lot of good things about string theory, and it's great that some people want to work on it.

Antony Garrett Lisi

#96. May future generations look back on our work
and say that these were men and women who,
in a moment of great crisis,
stood up to their politicians,
the opinion-makers, and the establishment,
and saved their country.

Ron Paul

#97. Here again is one grand element of a preacher's success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, To make easy things seem hard is every man's work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.

J.C. Ryle

#98. That's great," Katie said. "Actually, it's revolutionary. If you can work and be in love at the same time, you're the first woman I ever knew that could. Maybe you're the missing link, Amanda."
Maybe you ought to get a job for the 'Ladies Home Journal.' They like simplistic shit like that.

Ellen Gilchrist

#99. A true evangelist is almost as great a rarity as a true pastor. Alas! Alas! How rare are both! The two are closely connected. The evangelist gathers the sheep; the pastor feeds and cares for them. The work of each lies very near the heart of Christ- [Who Is] The Divine Evangelist and Pastor ...

Charles Henry Mackintosh

#100. When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

Mark Harmon

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