Top 100 The 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. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
Steve Ballmer
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Oscar Wilde
#34. 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
#35. Coaching isn't a great mystery. It's Just hard work, determination, and inspiration at the right moment.
Robert Zuppke
#36. The Gita is not an aphoristic work, it is a great religious poem.
Mahatma Gandhi
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. ...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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. '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
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. I work all the time because it's a great distraction and it keeps me from sitting home and obsessing morbidly.
Woody Allen
#72. When the 'weaker' of the two brains (right and left) is stimulated and encouraged to work in cooperation with the stronger side, the end result is a great increase in overall ability and ... often five to ten times more effectiveness.
Robert E. Ornstein
#73. Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.
Jason Alexander
#74. I don't think I'm craving any more fame. But success and being recognized for making great work all around the world, I think it's a great thing.
John Legend
#75. The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for "The
Edward Gibbon
#76. Having a Great Ambition is also a Meditation. When our efforts are focussed sincerely, even during sleep, our brains will work on it, in the form of Dreams.
Dinesh Kumar Radhakrishnan
#77. He had the "Love-sonnets from the Portuguese" in mind as he wrote, and he wrote under the best conditions for great work, at a climacteric of living, in the throes of his own sweet love-madness. The
Jack London
#78. I gave the couple a hint of a design that would work great with the bones of their home. They weren't ready for it, and they embarrassed themselves and that's too bad.
Douglas Wilson
#79. The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.
Mandy Patinkin
#80. When I'm marketing a film, whether its mine or someone else's, I work with a great deal of strategy and elbow grease until the job is done.
Ava DuVernay
#81. "If you die, you get to heaven; and if you win, you enjoy the earth" (Gita). Even if you die in this attempt, well and good, many will take up the work, following your example. And if you succeed, you will live a life of great opulence.
Swami Vivekananda
#82. What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it ... The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all ... When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.
Mark Twain
#83. To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
Simone Weil
#84. Everything is much easier in the half-blind and half-deaf world of modern giants that seduce processions of the blind into the world of great emptiness. In their sky the stars shine and their names live in the parallel and independently of their work.
Dejan Stojanovic
#85. This is the sum; my brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our one great all-comprehending theme
Charles Spurgeon
#86. To make HP a great company once again, we need more than competitive costs and operational efficiency. We're in the process of assessing and refining our growth strategy, and the same concepts that were behind our operational changes will be at work here: simplicity, focus, alignment, and execution.
Bill Vaughan
#87. All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.
Sidney Lumet
#88. With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you have no idea if it's going to work. And then you get the response. It's great when it's good.
Steve Martin
#89. What I believe in and the way I work with my clients is we're so quick to say what we don't like about our bodies, but it's really important to say the things we do like about our bodies. If you know you have great legs or a great butt, or if you're curvy, show it off if you're proud of it.
Brad Goreski
#90. CBS is proud to have been the home of David Letterman since 1993. He is truly one of the great talents of our time, and we hope things work out.
Leslie Moonves
#91. His work was so great that it cannot be compassed in a few words. His death is one of the greatest losses ever to occur to British science.
{Describing Ernest Rutherford upon his death at age 66. Thomson, then 80 years old, was once his teacher.}
J.J. Thomson
#92. We feel more emotion ... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.
Chris Marker
#93. It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast
easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident; it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all.
Alfred Adler
#94. The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well they must be far from civilization.
Carl Sagan
#95. Pushing too hard will only make things freeze up. How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?
Daniel Keyes
#96. I honestly never wanted to direct. It was only when I started to work on 'Alexander the Great' that I realized I had to direct. I saw something so specifically in my mind, I could not leave it to someone else.
Christopher McQuarrie
#97. I enjoy making films and some experiences are better than others. Most of the time they're great experiences ... but turning up to go to work on this every day was an absolute pleasure and that comes from the top.
Ray Winstone
#98. I find that so often this work can so easily overcome you and knock you out of balance and become all you think about and all you care about and all you feel is important in your life, and it's kind of the opposite. Relationships first and people first and then you can be a great performer.
Erin Davie
#99. China has great potentials; the people are hard-working and focused. But they have to close the gap as far as the pace of the game is concerned. Football in the future will get faster and faster.
Berti Vogts
#100. There's great stuff out there, but I prefer doing a TV show, going to work every day with the same people, and a lot of stuff is not being shot in Los Angeles and I don't really want to do that because my loved ones are here.
Paget Brewster
