Top 100 Quotes About Amateur
#1. To keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur.
Brassai
#2. It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations.
Jeb Bush
#3. If you tell an amateur that his story is not good, he always declares indignantly: 'Oh, but it really happened just like this!' The writer who doesn't understand that this is beside the point is not a writer at all.
Ayn Rand
#4. It's almost scary how amateur I am when it comes to musicals - I'm a musical goer, but I am not as obsessed with musicals as perhaps some of my theatrical friends are.
David Levithan
#5. In other words, we want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could. We don't want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity.
Angela Duckworth
#6. In my heart I like to remain an amateur, in the sense of being in love with what I'm doing, forever astonished again at the endless possibilities of seeing and using the camera as a recording tool.
Inge Morath
#7. Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.
Lawrence Lessig
#8. As a youngster, I played in Little League, Pony League, and all sorts of amateur baseball programs growing up.
Jim Evans
#9. I've returned to being an amateur without any ties or strings attached, which gives me a freedom I never had before.
Cat Stevens
#10. The mind is the most important thing of the big picture and no one has a stronger mindset than amateur wrestlers.
Joe Rogan
#11. Professional Wizard Incinerates Amateur Vampire. News at ten.
Jim Butcher
#12. You're losing your touch , Natasha. An unencrypted pay phone? Amateur hour.
Chris Samnee
#13. My father was a stone mason, and a talented amateur pianist and vocalist.
John E. Walker
#14. My dad was a keen actor when he was young; my auntie is heavily involved in amateur dramatics back in Northern Ireland, and my great aunt was a woman called Greer Garson.
Jamie Dornan
#15. On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.
Evelyn Underhill
#16. But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot
#17. I could give him business cards...multi-camoflauge background. David, woodworker, amateur computer coder, and decoder extraordinaire," Lily daydreamed.
"Coder and decoder," Anna chuckled.
Kate Willis
#18. As fandom grew more variegated, genzines reflected a broadening of interests, carrying personal columns of humor and reflection, science articles, amateur fiction, stylish gossip, and inevitably, thoughtful pieces on the future of fandom.
Gregory Benford
#19. If I had my way books would not be written in English but in an exceedingly difficult secret language ... This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors ... who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.
Robertson Davies
#20. I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
Tom Waits
#22. We may complain and cavil at the anarchy which is the amateurs natural element, but in soberness we must agree that if the amateur did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
Jacques Barzun
#23. I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
David McCullough
#24. It wasn't until '79 I won my first amateur championship, and then, by '81, I was 14, and I won my first world championship, which was amazing to me, and in a very real sense, that was the first real victory I had.
Rodney Mullen
#25. If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
Red Adair
#26. It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.
Wallace Stevens
#27. So I have the classic amateur's technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes.
Bill Bruford
#28. I've loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother's a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.
Rachel Bloom
#29. As an amateur you have an advantage over photographers - you can do as you wish ... This should make amateurs the happiest of photographers.
Andreas Feininger
#30. The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.
Steven Pressfield
#31. Magic has always been of a great interest of mine. I was an amateur magician when I was young. I used to practice and read up on it a lot. I'm well-aware of the history of magic.
Woody Allen
#32. Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
Edward Weston
#33. Luckily, the world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way. Otherwise each of us could be a poet or musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#34. Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.
Bruce Schneier
#35. The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting ... Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.
Sol Stein
#36. And you send people to jails. When they enter, they are amateur; when they come out, they have graduated from the university. All that your laws and your jails teach the criminals is one thing: that committing a crime is not a crime, but being caught is a crime.
Osho
#37. It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.
David Byrne
#38. Jazz is a big thing with me. It's a very big passion of mine, to play it. I'm an amateur musician and I love everything about it. I was obsessed with jazz when I was 15 years old and I know a lot about it because I've loved it so much.
Woody Allen
#39. The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.
Steven Pressfield
#41. I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.
William Klein
#42. I just quit in the third year of high school and started singing at amateur hours.
Sarah Vaughan
#43. When people discover they are no good at baseball or hockey, they put away their bats and their skates and they take up amateur golf or stamp collecting or gardening. But when people discover they are no good at picking stocks, they are likely to continue to do it anyway.
Peter Lynch
#44. I don't think anyone's particularly conscious of thinking suits are the thing, but when you see a comedian on stage in jeans and a t-shirt it doesn't matter how good they are - it always looks like amateur hour when they walk onto the stage.
Jack Dee
#45. No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
Socrates
#46. I always feel I'm an amateur. I don't most of the time know what I'm doing.
Steve McQueen
#47. I used to be an amateur inventor when I was a kid; I'm always inventing something.
Alan Alda
#48. In a few months I was a seasoned guide. I had viewed myself as an amateur guide and a professional shopman, but now gradually I began to think of myself as a part-time shop-keeper and a full-time tourist guide.
R.K. Narayan
#49. Misquotation is quotology's swamp. Amateur quoters mix and mangle Shakespeare and Scripture. Professors gaffe and printers bungle. It's a mess we must wade into.
Willis Regier
#50. I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.
Edmund Hillary
#51. Biologically, man is still the great amateur of the animal kingdom; he is unique in his lack of anatomical and physiological specialization.
Rene Dubos
#52. I got an agent when I was 12, and I started working in more amateur productions well before that. But even as a kid, I never felt like a kid actor, you know? I always took myself kind of absurdly seriously.
Claire Danes
#53. All types of magic performance have a purpose. Even if it's an amateur who's trying out slight of hand on YouTube.
Justin Flom
#54. This idea fascinates me. The idea that a few seconds of watching a photographer in action can tell you his/her status in the medium. And it's true. If you watch a photographer of merit working an event he/she does not look like an amateur ...
David Hurn
#55. It's as if they've planned out my life for me and I'm expected to live it for them. I hate it. So I don't tell anyone much. It's easier that way." ~Dani O'Meara from the forthcoming amateur sleuth mystery, Dangerous Days for Dani
Claire A. Murray
#56. It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.
Benjamin Graham
#57. I fell in love with acting at around the age of 11, when I was drafted in to play a fairy at an amateur production of 'Midsummer Night's Dream.'
Zoe Tapper
#58. The boundary between expert and amateur was an imposed social-cultural "protection" which actually exposed a number of women to a fatal disease, because decaying matter, as the fireman said of fire (cited in the book's final piece, "Torch Song") "ain't got no rules on it."
Laura Mullen
#59. I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor.
Ben Affleck
#60. I'm still an amateur, of course, but I became rugby's first millionaire five years ago.
David Campese
#61. You better be careful, I've got a ladle. You never know what a trained killer can do with an innocent-looking kitchen utensil.
I don't think you're a trained killer.
So should I be insulted that you think I'm an amateur killer?
Eileen Cook
#62. Every master was once a beginner. Every pro was once an amateur.
Robin Sharma
#63. I've dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.
Billy Childish
#64. That's what amateur skating is about, technical expertise, and it should always stay that way.
Brian Boitano
#66. The amateur has an infectious, contagious enthusiasm for golf and life.
Mac O'Grady
#67. He took her up in his arms in the way of a bachelor who has had amateur experience of the carrying of nieces.
William Pett Ridge
#68. The flaw of an amateur is to assume what's in our head is what's on the page.
David Morrell
#69. Although my family - parents and sister - all work in the personnel management business, their real passion is performing, amateur operatic societies and so on.
Michael Sheen
#70. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure.
Steven Pressfield
#71. I studied piano for many years, and I still play. I'm a complete amateur, and I wouldn't consider myself very good at all, but I enjoy it.
Eric Stoltz
#72. I grew up in a gym in Miami, the one where Muhammad Ali trained. I had 142 amateur fights and lost three.
Mickey Rourke
#73. Keep clear of psychiatrists unless you know that they are also Christians. Otherwise they start with the assumption that your religion is an illusion and try to 'cure' it: and this assumption they make not as professional psychologists but as amateur philosophers.
C.S. Lewis
#74. A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it.
James Agate
#75. My mother was an amateur singer, my father was an amateur drunk.
Ozzy Osbourne
#76. I do small cameos here and there but nothing that requires more than a paragraph of talking, because I'm just an amateur. The movie is a whole different reality.
Richard Price
#77. As long as you are hanging around amateurs, you will think like an amateur, and you will not improve your skills.
John C. Maxwell
#78. Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur.
P.G. Wodehouse
#79. My father was a GP; my mother was a teacher and amateur actress. My father was a bit of a storyteller, but the acting influence must have been from her - yes, put it down to my mother.
Ciaran Hinds
#80. We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.
Charlotte Cotton
#81. Nevertheless, if I have at times been able to make original contributions in the accelerator field, I cannot help feeling that to a certain extent my slightly amateur approach in physics, combined with much practical experience, was an asset.
Simon Van Der Meer
#82. When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.
Henri Matisse
#83. The Australian film industry has recognised Tropfest as a place to nurture young talent. It's a stepping stone between amateur and professional.
John Polson
#84. An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
Ben Shahn
#85. Doris said the only thing anybody can say in an amateur theatrical society when somebody cries. She said, Why, no dear - you were marvelous.
Kurt Vonnegut
#86. Firmness in all aspects is a most important quality when gardening, not only in planting but in pruning, dividing and tying up. Plants are like babies, they know when an amateur is handling them.
Margery Fish
#87. More than any other major sport, professional or amateur, college football games are decided by the physical incompetence and downright chokery of their players.
Stephen Rodrick
#88. I am an amateur mountain climber. Once or twice a year I go off to Chamonix in the French Alps, under Mont Blanc, and with a guide do treks that include rock climbing at high altitude.
Robert Littell
#89. I almost didn't turn pro at all. I was tempted to be a career amateur. I worked as an investment banker for nine months after I got out of school, and the money was fantastic and promised to get even more lucrative.
Matt Kuchar
#91. The writer who is literally an addict, the writer who can't help himself, the writer who HAS to write, can never be anything but an amateur, because the industry requires the professional to put writing on hold not just for a day or two, or a week, but for years.
Helen DeWitt
#92. It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.
Damian Lewis
#93. A sure sign of an amateur is too much detail to compensate for too little life.
Woodrow Wilson
#94. The commonest forms of amateur natural history in the United States are probably gardening, bird watching, the maintenance of aquarium fish, and nature photography.
Marston Bates
#95. By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Stephen Sondheim
#96. When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.
Will Rogers
#97. December 25, 1963
Christmas night and they've battered their heads together until they are silly and they've smiled themselves silly and vomited on the floor, 98% of them amateur drinkers, amateur Christians, amateur human beings
Charles Bukowski
#98. I was 20, I was an amateur from 14 but my first professional role was at 22.
Richard Briers
#99. I always had the desire to perform. If it wasn't my career now, I'd still be doing amateur dramatics. It's just something you love, and when you get paid to do it, you pinch yourself every day.
Mathew Baynton
#100. Jane shared his sentiment, but was hard-pressed not to laugh at her husband's inventive turns of phrase - her favourite was "goat-licking amateur," followed closely by "mongrel's handmaiden.
Mary Robinette Kowal
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