The Professional Quotes

#1. The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

Steven Pressfield

#2. The Services offer the cleanest and most natural support to an aggressive foreign policy; expansion of the empire appeals powerfully to the aristocracy and the professional classes by offering new and ever-growing fields for the honorable and profitable employment of their sons.

J.A. Hobson

#3. I'm fascinated by the journey that an intelligent and an ambitious woman makes in the professional world in contrast to the journey that a man of similar ambition, of similar intelligence makes. What sort of concessions does a woman have to make? Does she have to work 20 percent harder than a man?

Charles Cumming

#4. When I know I'm going to work on a cover, I practically run to the computer! After working with words for so long, it's lovely to do something that's creative yet also the professional equivalent of scribbling in your own coloring book.

Teresa Medeiros

#5. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods.

Steven Pressfield

#6. On the professional side, those 18 years on the farm instilled my love for agriculture.

Mike Johanns

#7. I came up through the theater. I came out of drama college and started working in the professional theater.

Roma Downey

#8. The professional must learn to be moved and touched emotionally, yet at the same time stand back objectively: I've seen a lot of damage done by tea and sympathy.

Anthony Storr

#9. The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems.

Stephen Covey

#10. Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.

Theodore Roosevelt

#11. Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

John Dos Passos

#12. The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you're finished.

Steven Pressfield

#13. You hide behind the professional persona all day; then you leave the office and hide behind the drink.

Caroline Knapp

#14. The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work.

Steven Pressfield

#15. I was very pleased with the entire selection process. The manner in which it was conducted included all parts of United States' basketball, from the professional level to the colleges and high schools. Everyone was considered.

Mike Krzyzewski

#16. One of the laws of the professional jungle is that every dog has their day. Everyone gets a shot at the top and at some point someone else gets their turn.

Carla Harris

#17. I think a lot of times it's not money that's the primary motivation factor; it's the passion for your job and the professional and personal satisfaction that you get out of doing what you do that motivates you.

Martin Yan

#18. Dignity' has to do crucially with a butler's ability not to abandon the professional being he inhabits.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#19. Free services like Wikipedia I don't think benefit anyone - they don't benefit the professional because they're not paid.

Andrew Keen

#20. I think most artists feel like they're outside society - no matter how many accolades they receive, or how much money is in your bank account, whatever is going on in your life on the professional side.

Aaron Rose

#21. The professional will not tolerate disorder ... He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.

Steven Pressfield

#22. I feel as though we're living in a time where there is very little distinction paid between the personal and the professional.

Wentworth Miller

#23. Code formatting is important. It is too important to ignore and it is too important to treat religiously. Code formatting is about communication, and communication is the professional developer's first order of business.

Robert C. Martin

#24. Digital is expensive, from the computers to the professional software to the technicians, but digital helps me to create more beautiful images in less time.

Michel Ocelot

#25. Remember: the amateur works until he can get it right. The professional works until he cannot go wrong.

Julie Andrews Edwards

#26. The anateur works until they get something right. The professional works until they can't go wrong.

Julie Andrews Edwards

#27. The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time. That's what I mean when I say turning pro. Resistance hates it when we turn pro.

Steven Pressfield

#28. I've never been asked to appear on 'I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!,' so I guess I mustn't be on the professional skids just yet.

Robin Williams

#29. - except for the fact that your scars mean you've been hurting, I am one-hundred-percent cool with having them in the painting. Some models, especially the professional ones, it's like painting air-brushed people. Give me something raw any day.

J. Kenner

#30. I don't think a professional agent or theatre manager would say my career had gone as well as perhaps it should have after that first 'Oliver!' success, but then again I was never really intending to have a career in the professional theatre in the first place.

Ron Moody

#31. I wouldn't say I'm a spender in the sense that I'm going out on huge spending sprees. However, to be able to function at the top of your game on the professional tennis circuit often requires an element of frequent spending.

Andy Murray

#32. While I have always, felt like an outsider, it's because of the professional choices I have made, so it's not like I am planning to throw myself a giant pity party.

Anna Paquin

#33. So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.

George Jean Nathan

#34. Contemporary warfare, then, is best practiced by the professional serial killer.

Frederic Morton

#35. The professional cleaning industry estimates that 85 percent of the dirt we bring into our homes enters via our shoes or our pets' paws.

Christopher Gavigan

#36. I have no feud, either with my employers, any sponsors, or with the professional critics of radio and television. But I am seized with an abiding fear regarding what these two instruments are doing to our society, our culture and our heritage.

Edward R. Murrow

#37. I always said the professional advocate was the most amoral person on the face of the earth. I'm certain of it now.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#38. He smiled when he talked, a smile that was not completely cold, but was the professional smile of a man who spends his days answering easy questions for people whom he'd rather usher out of his office via catapult.

Cherie Priest

#39. I've made a wonderful living playing that theatrical character - the professional brassy dame.

Ethel Merman

#40. The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.

Steven Pressfield

#41. He called himself an "agnostic" instead of an "atheist" only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelicism of the professional atheists.

Sinclair Lewis

#42. My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.

Alan Moore

#43. It's been one of those things where anybody that's played a sport at the professional level, there's always a lot of challenges. And the one thing that's always been a constant for me is Jesus Christ and my faith - and just knowing that my walk with Christ is steadily going up.

Tim Hudson

#44. The worst attitude of all would be the professional attitude which regards children in the lump as a sort of raw material which we have to handle.

C.S. Lewis

#45. I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.

Helen Mirren

#46. Many young girls are ... becoming trained nurses,
whose gentle ministrations in the sick-room, skilled touch,
patient watchfulness and unwearied vigils,
are as great factors in the care of the sick,
as are the professional physicians.

Lydia Hoyt Farmer

#47. We're the only major company in the U.S. that is solely in the professional beauty industry. We promised hairdressers when we started that we would stay with them. If I went retail tomorrow then we would be four times our size overnight, but I'm going to be the one guy who kept his word.

John Paul DeJoria

#48. The professional's grasp of the numbers is a measure of the control he has over the events that the figures represent.

Harold Geneen

#49. Academe was one of the last strongholds of the professional time-waster.

Clive Barker

#50. In my book (and this is my book!) magical thinking is the alchemy that you can use to visualize and project yourself into the professional and personal life that you want.

Sophia Amoruso

#51. The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn't devote his life to it of his own free will.

Steven Pressfield

#52. The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Jimmy Breslin

#53. I'd prefer a debriefing by the professional," Matthias said. "Rather than one of the idiot's exhausting, million-words-in-one-breath babbling explanations." "Hey," I said. "That is a rare talent." "Maybe your only talent.

A&E Kirk

#54. Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.

Lawrence Lessig

#55. The professional guts a book through - in full knowledge that what he is doing is not very good. Not to work is to exhibit a failure of nerve.

John Gregory Dunne

#56. Engineering is the professional and systematic application of science to the efficient utilization of natural resources to produce wealth.

Theodore J. Hoover

#57. Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

Don McCullin

#58. The concept of Red was to build a camera with as much capability as possible ... for the professional market. Then we thought we could extend it down a bit to the prosumer level. Apparently, that was a mistake.

James Jannard

#59. There wouldn't be any way I could have jumped into Cup with the success I had without the truck series. I wish I had more time to spend there. There are so many things the truck teaches you about aerodynamics, the professional ranks of racing, and working with a professional team.

Kurt Busch

#60. 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

#61. In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful.

St. Vincent

#62. You rarely, in the professional world, have the chance to express yourself as an individual.

Gillian Armstrong

#63. If I represent the pinnacle of family success for all the Jason Dessens, Jason2 represents the professional and creative apex. We're opposite poles of the same man, and I suppose it isn't a coincidence that Jason2 sought out my life from the infinite possibilities available. Though

Blake Crouch

#64. Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

Kenneth Lonergan

#65. Our Government is pleased to partner with the Kelowna Visual and Performing Arts Centre Society, located in the heart of British Columbia's vibrant Central Okanagan region. Support for the performing arts is essential for the professional growth and development of our Canadian artists.

Shelly Glover

#66. Before I was an actor I was a break dancer, one of those street performers you see. I guess my introduction into the professional world of performing was a stint as back up dancer for Lionel Richie and I performed at the closing ceremony at the '84 Olympics.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

#67. The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

Steven Pressfield

#68. The bottom line, in the professional level, no matter where you go, there's going to be competition. That's what it is. At the end of the day, you're trying to put team first and make each other better.

Scott Tolzien

#69. 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

#70. Get involved in an issue that you're passionate about. It almost doesn't matter what it is ... We give too much of our power away, to the professional politicians, to the lobbyists, to cynicism. And our democracy suffers as a result.

Barack Obama

#71. And even though we don't have the professional relationship anymore, the love and friendship we have for each other will remain. He is like a father to me and I hope we both keep succeeding in our careers.

Gustavo Kuerten

#72. It is the professional pilot's bounden duty to know the idiosyncrasies of each type (of airplane), for he must spend a large proportion of his active career exploiting its qualities and compensating for its faults. These secrets cannot be discovered in a ground school.

Ernest K. Gann

#73. On several occasions, we are informed that the professional ideal 'took steps', 'organised assaults', and 'selected social problems'. But this is anthropomorphic metaphor implausibly masquerading as historical explanation.

David Cannadine

#74. In the professional world of leadership ambition and potential are the most excessive commodities.

Noel DeJesus

#75. I do what I'm allowed, but I gladly let the professional - and often incredibly talented - stunt team to do their jobs. Even with all their training, they still get hurt.

Keahu Kahuanui

#76. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers.

Steven Pressfield

#77. The work of one author or artist may stimulate another author or artist to push the edge, to take the risk, to go where the field hasn't gone before. The result -very exciting children's literature and art ... exciting both for the professional and for the intended audience, the children.

Karen Hesse

#78. Technically, the professional takes money. Technically, the pro plays for pay. But in the end, he does it for love.

Steven Pressfield

#79. 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

#80. It is still your work or role that finally gives you your definition in our society, and the thousands upon thousands of people who I believe are like me are those who have never found the professional skin to fit the riot in their souls .

Seymour Krim

#81. I was just the one who upgraded her software and made sure that nothing broke down. If anyone was equipped for the job, it was me, the professional computational linguist.

Elizabeth Bear

#82. The Professional Children's School, it's for professional kids, so if you wanted to ditch, you could just write, Audition on a note and leave. I didn't really like school all that much.

Kieran Culkin

#83. When I was cast for 'Walking Dead,' I was still doing 'Lone Ranger,' so I have my 'Lone Ranger' look with the handlebar mustache. I think everybody appreciates the professional mustache.

Lew Temple

#84. That was not the professional hatred of one warrior for another in the heat of battle, in which even beneath the hatred there still existed a certain begrudging respect.

Raymond E. Feist

#85. The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.

Steven Pressfield

#86. And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual (male), it may be mainly a quantitative difference.

Susan Griffin

#87. Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all of the professional patriots with all their cheap words.

Monte Irvin

#88. The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

Steven Pressfield

#89. The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.

Steven Pressfield

#90. The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He

Steven Pressfield

#91. This 90/10 rule holds true in almost anything financial. Take the game of golf, for example. Ten percent of the professional golfers make 90 percent of the money.

Robert Kiyosaki

#92. I feel more strongly than ever about this. I would like the professional game freed of golf carts. Golf is a physical game. If we are playing competitive professional golf, we should walk. When I can't walk 18 holes, I'll pack it in.

Arnold Palmer

#93. Just for the record, I'm in favor of drug testing EVERY year just as long as it's a level playing field. The problem arises that a lot of these substances are hard to detect. So, it's very difficult to have true, drug-free bodybuilding competition, especially on the professional level.

Lee Labrada

#94. I was occupied by a range of questions, often different from those fashionable in the professional philosophy of the past half century, that have sometimes troubled philosophers in the past. It's taken me several decades to work out my own philosophical agenda, and it is wide.

Philip Kitcher

#95. For the professional writer, stories must be presented as a series of individual scenes, each one dramatized with dialogue and telling descriptions of who is present and what they're all doing.

Nancy Kress

#96. When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.

Yo-Yo Ma

#97. Going to the doctor - at least this doctor - was like going to the hairdresser. The client (patient) has to let the professional know what she wants out of each visit. The patient is in charge.

Barry Schwartz

#98. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.

Steven Pressfield

#99. We are all amateur dancers; the professional dancer is the Earth, the Sun, and all the planets! They have been dancing nonstop for billions of years!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#100. People are angry that things as common sense as securing the border and eliminating sanctuary cities are being framed as extreme views. They are tired of empty rhetoric without action, and they are hungry for a leader from outside the professional political class.

Carly Fiorina