Amateur Quotes & Sayings

To those of you who are sticklers for safety and approach life with all the caution of amateur beekeepers, I can offer no excuse for what I did then. I'll admit that a more mature human being would never have let her curiosity take control. Thankfully, I was twelve years old and fully prepared to meet the challenge at hand. — Kirsten Miller

Every professional was once an amateur. — Alexander Pope

I saw rich beggars and poor beggars, proud beggars and humble beggars, fat beggars and thin beggars, healthy beggars and sick beggars, whole beggars and crippled beggars, wise beggars and stupid beggars. I saw amateur beggars and professional beggars. A professional beggar is a beggar who begs for a living. — William, Saroyan

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

My father and my uncle used to be amateur monologuists because their generation grew up with Henry Irving and the like, and they had that style of delivery, of declamation: 'The Belllllls!' What we call 'ham' now, larger than life. — Ron Moody

The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know. — B.F. Skinner

I would like to attribute my range of interests to being an independent intellectual, but although I'm independent, I'm not sure I qualify as an intellectual. Basically, I'm an old-fashioned amateur. — Anne Fadiman

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

The big tragedy in baseball is that the amateur spirit has gone out of it to a large extent. — Larry MacPhail

The AAC is the best amateur event in the region and the most important tournament to me every year. — Guan Tianlang

She didn't look like any motel manager I had ever seen. More likely an actress who hadn't quite made the grade down south, or a very successful amateur tart on the verge of turning pro. Whatever her business was, there had to be sex in it. She was as full of sex as a grape is full of juice, and so young that it hadn't begun to sour. — Ross Macdonald

I began to appreciate that the job of an amateur sleuth was not quite so straightforward as they make out in the whodunits. — Bruce Beckham

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

I think of making love and making art as being very parallel. Even the most amateur attempt can be thrilling. — Julia Cameron

I love the idea of the amateur - that's what popular culture is all about. But what the Internet's doing is professionalizing everyone's amateuristic impulses. — Lee Siegel

At home, at school, among acquaintances, she had been used to have her conscious superiority admitted; and she had moved in a society where everything, from low arithmetic to high art, is of the amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do more than they like - otherwise they would probably give forth abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists than any the world is at present obliged to put up with. — George Eliot

So you're like a ... an amateur sleuth?"
"God no. I'm more like the hapless guys in those film-noir flicks we used to watch. I keep getting tangled up in bizarro events."
"Oh yes?" His eyes lit with enthusiasm. I was speaking his language now. "Guy Pearce in L.A. Confidential or William Hurt in Body Heat?"
"I was thinking more like Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam. — Josh Lanyon

When people buy, rescue, or otherwise acquire a dog from unscrupulous breeders or amateur rescue groups, they are making a decision with ethical consequences. They have a profound responsibility to consider their actions; to gauge the dog's behavior, to train it thoroughly and rigorously, to protect other humans and dogs from harm. — Jon Katz

He'd kill you all right. No sweat. But for the wrong reasons. Amateur's reasons. Of course, you'll be just as dead. — Laurell K. Hamilton

You can be an amateur and have a passion for something, but it takes a long time to actually become a professional, meaning that you can handle any situation. — Patton Oswalt

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

The flaw of an amateur is to assume what's in our head is what's on the page. — David Morrell

Brush strokes write poetry harmonized through the cords of an artist's imagination.
Color, contrast, simple compassion splattered across paper leaves tainted with the melody of the silent wind.
Gasping, grasping, simply glancing at the souls of those who were not blessed with the visionary sight of inspirational artistry. — Laura S. Al Bast

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

In expert tennis, 80% of the points are won, while in amateur tennis, 80% are lost. The same is true for wrestling, chess, and investing: Beginners should focus on avoiding mistakes, experts on making great moves." Erik Falkenstein — Lucas Carlson

But I don't know what my side is, he thought, as he went back to his chair by the window. The Liberation, of course, yes, but what is the Liberation? Not an ideal, the freedom of the enslaved. Not now. Never again. Since the Uprising, the Liberation is an army, a political body, a great number of people and leaders and would-be leaders, ambitions and greed clogging hopes and strength, a clumsy amateur semi-government lurching from violence to compromise, ever more complicated, never again to know the beautiful simplicity of the ideal, the pure idea of liberty. And — Ursula K. Le Guin

A witness can be of more value than a policy analyst. An amateur witness, free of conceptual bias, sometimes sees the plainest truth. One should never be blinded by tailoring. — Andrew Solomon

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

Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. — Bruce Schneier

The fact that I could secure an opera engagement made me realize I had within me the making of an artist, if I would really labor for such an end. When I became thoroughly convinced of this, I was transformed from an amateur into a professional in a single day. — Enrico Caruso

My father was an amateur filmmaker who shot 8mm color documentaries. — Lasse Hallstrom

Before I ever acted as an amateur - which I did a great deal at school and at university - I used to go to the theater with my parents in the north of England, where I was born and brought up ... Theater of all sorts. — Ian McKellen

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19. — Tony Bennett

I did some traveling as an amateur and always loved the different places I saw. — Peter Uihlein

I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void. — Sam Claflin

Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn't have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It's just the other side of winning. I guess I'm a farmer now, because I'm used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It's just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields. — Kristin Kimball

The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity'
of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The subject,' says one handbook for amateur photographers, 'must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity. — Roland Barthes

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores. — Charles Bukowski

I was trying to find an original style that didn't sound like Tony Bennett or anyone else. So I prayed about it, woke up with this high voice, and by 1954, I was going to amateur nights and winning. — Tiny Tim

If it weren't for radio programs like 'The George Jarkesy Show,' no one would know about 'The Amateur'. — Edward Klein

The difference between and amateur and a professional.. a professional believes if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. An amateur believes if a job is worth doing, it very well may be worth doing badly. — Robert Littell

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University. — Alan Greenspan

habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accepts no excuses 10. The professional plays it as it lays 11. The professional is prepared 12. The professional does not show off 13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique 14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help 15. The professional does not take failure or success personally 16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument 17. The professional endures adversity 18. The professional self-validates 19. The professional reinvents herself 20. The professional is recognized by other professionals — Steven Pressfield

Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was - to strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends - albeit more by circumstance than by choice - he understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed - and thereby strained - by comprehensibility. — Ashim Shanker

He also knew the language of The Klingons, but the army had no use for it. — Noorilhuda

I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn't even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game. — Nelly

Growing up as an amateur, I wasn't much of a power puncher. I was more of a speed guy. — Nonito Donaire

Of course it's very hampering being a detective, when you don't know anything about detecting, and when nobody knows that you're doing detection, and you can't have people up to cross-examine them, and you have neither the energy nor the means to make proper inquiries; and, in short, when you're doing the whole thing in a thoroughly amateur, haphazard way. — A.A. Milne

I'm not going to be a guy that retires and keeps coming back. When I'm gone, I'm gone. Same thing as amateur wrestling; when I won the world championships in Olympics, I left and I never went back. Same for pro. — Kurt Angle

Time management is probably the biggest thing I've had to learn to deal with being on the PGA Tour, whether it be media or figuring out how many weeks to play in a row. That's been the biggest adjustment, coming from amateur and college golf. — Rickie Fowler

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

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing Sin City. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights. — Frank Miller

it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. He — George Orwell

Children deprived of words become school dropouts; dropouts deprived of hope behave delinquently. Amateur censors blame delinquency on reading immoral books and magazines, when in fact, the inability to read anything is the basic trouble. — Peter S. Jennison

An amateur practices something until he gets it right.

A professional practices until he can't get it wrong! — Barry Green

Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House. — Donald Rumsfeld

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

The first discipline is the realization that there is a discipline - -that all art begins and ends with discipline, that any art is first and foremost a craft. We have gone far enough on the road to self-indulgence now to know that. The man who announces to the world that he is going to "do his thing" is like the amateur on the high-diving platform who flings himself into the void shouting at the judges that he is going to do whatever comes naturally. He will land on his ass. Naturally. You'd think, to listen to the loudspeakers that surround us, that no man had ever tried to "do his thing" before. Every poet worth reading has, but those really worth reading have understood that to do your thing you have to learn first what your thing is and second how to go about doing it. — Archibald MacLeish

I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music. Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness. But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives. — Ernst Bacon

Psychologically speaking (I'll only wheel out the amateur psychology just this once, so bear with me), encounters that call up strong physical disgust or revulsion are often in fact projections of our own faults and weaknesses. — Haruki Murakami

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

She had to save herself from every last one of them. All of them, the people at the orphanage, the foster care system, the middle school, they were all outsiders and strangers and a possible threat.....The counselor couldn't prove otherwise. — Noorilhuda

"He's already been found, like I said," Jeb answers, his attention on the hand pressed at my neck. He narrows his eyes, and with a subtle flick of his fingers, Morpheus's shadow rises from the floor and wrestles Morpheus away from me.
Growling, Morpheus shoves the dark silhouette aside, then glares at Jeb. "Amateur. Cheap parlor tricks."
Jeb gives him a vicious grin. "A pupil is only as good as his tutor." — A.G. Howard

Golf is a lot like sex. It's something you can enjoy all your life. And if you remain an amateur, you get to pick your own playing partners. — Jess Sweetser

To be honest, I thought of you as an amateur - a spoiled, entitled, runaway princeling bent on revenge who would get caught and then complicate my elegant scheme. I figured the less you knew, the better."
"I hate it when you sugarcoat things," Ash said. — Cinda Williams Chima

There were a lot of gifted amateurs in my day. Most of the kids now play fantastically well. I think there are so many bands around now who might get there, but it's a tougher journey. — Nick Mason

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. — Douglas Murray

I did ballet and gymnastics, and then I started acting when I was eight - just doing amateur theater at a place called Oldham Theatre Workshop in my hometown. — Olivia Cooke

I do believe that in a race, it is naive to think Linux has a hope of making a dent against Microsoft starting from way behind with a fraction of the resources and amateur labor. (I feel the same about Unix. — Kenneth P. Thompson

Stubbornly unsolved, and of the laborious and ongoing task of decipherment and translation. For the curious amateur, — Alison Croggon

I am the discoverer of Quantum Editing, the process whereby the amateur editor keeps being changed by the editing he does, requiring him to further edit the manuscript, changing him yet further, etc. — Matt Chatelain

Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate "hurry" and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity - without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative. — Ford Madox Ford

Forget about being an expert or a professional, and wear your amateurism (your heart, your love) on your sleeve. Share what you love, and the people who love the same things will find you. — Austin Kleon

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

Obama doesn't know how to be President. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur! — Bill Clinton

All too frequently the amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing 'Chopsticks' on a concert grand piano. — Sam Haskins

Any chance I had to get in front of people - amateur talent contests at movie houses like the Broadway, the president - I took. — Frankie Avalon

Historians tell us that a gentleman named John Ball once captured eight British Amateur titles. — Dan Jenkins

I'm an amateur at music and an amateur at most things. I like the idea of offering some music and some records and a website to people who feel perplexed. — Ezra Furman

Amateurs wait for inspiration. The real pros get up and go to work. — Harvey MacKay

I think it is silly to be amateur about anything when one has an opportunity of learning. — Beverley Nichols

Few people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had they only taken it up seriously. — M.R. James

Many philosophers - particularly amateur philosophers, and ancient philosophers - share a dangerous instinct: If you give them a question, they try to answer it. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love. — Alfred Stieglitz

Maybe the best way to get people to be pro-life is to start 'em off in amateur-life. — Brian Celio

In life and art it's better to be an enthusiastic amateur than a jaded professional. — Robert Genn

Remind your critics when they say you don't have the expertise or experience to do something that an amateur built the ark and the experts built the Titanic — Peyton Manning

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur. — Woodrow Wilson

Underground dance music - in the nicest way possible - it's amateur — Axwell

Architecture might be more sportive and varied if every man built his own house, but it would not be the art and science that we have made it; and while every woman prepares food for her own family, cooking can never rise beyond the level of the amateur's work. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

amateur gynecology. — Gregory Benford

It is just like one of those ridiculous paperbacks where some amateur with no apparent connection to the forces of law and order leaps in and saves the day. — Claire Ingrams

My grandpa was an amateur stand-up comic when I was growing up ... He'd have me come up onstage with him to deliver a punch line: 'Why is your nose in the middle of your face?' 'Because it's the scenter.' — Rachel Bloom

Sometimes difficulty clarifies things. And sometimes realizing that the road you've chosen is a demanding one gives you the courage to stay on that road. It reveals the nature of our relationship with God. It sounds cute and comforting to say "God is in control," and people who say that may imagine sitting on their daddy's lap behind the wheel of the family car, going "Vroom vroomy vroom!" while Daddy does the steering. In reality, when God is in control, it feels more like one of those movies where some amateur has to step up and land the airplane or steer the ship to safety through a crashing storm, with an expert giving them instructions remotely through a headset. In theory, following the expert's instructions will help us get in safely; but our fear, panic, self-doubt, and lack of skill are not exactly comforting. Yes, God is in control, but we're the ones who are in for a rough ride. — Simcha Fisher

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well. — Agatha Christie

Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur. — P.G. Wodehouse

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

our environment is much stronger than our intellect. Remarkably few investors - either amateur or professional - truly understand this critical point. — Guy Spier