Quotes & Sayings About Careers

At some point in my career, I was thinking, "Why am I not a star? Why am I not Brad Pitt? Why am I not Tom Cruise?" — Patrick Fabian

I've always loved being at the eye of the storm creatively with people that I find exciting and glamorous. So sometimes I got sidetracked in my career and maybe I would have done more TV or film. — Sandra Bernhard

I think sometimes you get given a good pile of goodwill, and it's whether you use it up in the first six months or spread it out over a career. — Ricky Gervais

Building a career or a company is about living a few years of your life like most people won't so that you can spend the rest of your life living at a level most people can't. — Jay Samit

My entire career is contemporary based, not by choice, but just by character. So, all the movies I've done, except for one in 40 years, are contemporary. But I never did an effects movie. So, I'm also a producer and I was really curious about how this whole thing went together. — Michael Douglas

I found my way into the indie world a bit late in my career, but it was something that I was really passionate about doing. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting. — Ang Lee

My career has been: first you have to prove yourself, then there's the sophomore record, then there's this thing and that thing, and you always want to be understood. — Fiona Apple

Education opens the door to everything in terms of having a career and an impact on society and not being a slave to your job, really. — Naomie Harris

I really do consider myself quite fledgling in my acting career. I've only been doing it for 10 years and that's a short amount of time, really. — Ed Speleers

How can I combine career and family? — Gloria Steinem

I'd have to say Steven Gerrard has been the biggest influence in my career so far. I watched him when I was younger and then to go and play and train with him every day is massive for me, and still is now. — Jordan Henderson

When you build a career, you should never imitate anybody. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I'm telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work. — Jack Welch

I think YouTube used to have a negative connotation, like it was the place where the rejects went and made careers, but I'm proud to be YouTuber. I wanted to be in that first generation of YouTube stars who transitioned into the 'real world.' It was a really good way to build my business. — Lindsey Stirling

I've only had one dramatic role in my entire career and when I did it, I was in heaven and I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm going to get more of these.' — Jennifer Coolidge

There were times in my career ... when I felt like a trapeze artist doing dangerous somersaults without a net underneath. When you execute those somersaults flawlessly, the audience feels the same sense of triumph the performer does. — Beverly Sills

We prepare our students for jobs and careers, but we don't teach them to think as individuals about what kind of world they would create. — Muhammad Yunus

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement. — J.K. Rowling

My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career. — Michael Emerson

The career of a young theoretical physicist consists of treating the harmonic oscillator in ever-increasing levels of abstraction. — Sidney Coleman

I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed. — Tony Bennett

I enjoy playing real human beings after playing a lot of larger than life characters. I love playing true to life characters and that is what I intend to do for the majority of my career. — Michael Jai White

In the reality - TV era, unstable behavior become a valid career choice. — James Poniewozik

I find trying to solve problems and save lives is far more important than my film career. — Nicole Kidman

It'd be the thrill of anyone's bull riding career to ride Red Rock.
Like when Freckles Brown rode Tornado. — Lane Frost

If I'm nominated [for Grammy] I would love to win, and get up on the stage and just say thank you. It would be a great closing, for me, a great closing to a great career. — Ginuwine

But when it became an international hoopla where careers lived and died on whether or not you did or didn't get an Oscar, then it got out of hand. — George C. Scott

I want to be mayor, but I don't need to be mayor. I'm not a career politician. — Dick Murphy

First, there's the job - where the goal is simply to earn a living and support your family. Then there's the career - where you trace your progress through various appointments and achievements. Finally, there's the calling - the ideal blend of activity and character that makes work inseparable from life. — Robert Bella

A football match should be decided by an action of play. Not some contrived process whose end result is to mark a fine player such as Bossis, Baresi or Baggio for the rest of his career. — Michel Patini

Thus, each day we are given a choice. Do we remember that we did not come here to suffer? Do we remember that we deserve the best in our relationships, our careers, and our health, and that we have everything we need within us to claim this? Do we remember that we deserve to be treated with kindness, love, and respect both by ourselves and by others? Or, do we settle for a half-lived life? Do we compromise ourselves and abandon our soul's inner — Blake D. Bauer

I want to give people jobs and put them on great shows. I want to create careers for people. — Aldis Hodge

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice
who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal
wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?. — Charles Schumer

My first big career purchase when I was, like, 17 was a Louis Vuitton laptop bag. Now, seeing the exhibit [Louis Vuitton's "Series 3" exhibition in London], it's exciting because I feel like I kind of know it. It's weird - it's almost like something you grow up with and you just know a little bit about it. Now that I'm immersed in it, it's kind of insane. — Selena Gomez

Before that I had largely thought of selling as just a way of making a living for myself. I had dreaded to go in to see people, for fear I was making a nuisance of myself. But now I was inspired! I resolved right then to dedicate the rest of my selling career to this principle: finding out what people want, and helping them get it. — Frank Bettger

I felt if I didn't find anything, I would give up a scientific career altogether. — Simon LeVay

I feel it is now my duty to speak to young women, to encourage them to have careers and, particularly, careers in science. — Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

I wasn't paid a dime for my track career. But participating in the Olympics gave me the opportunity to learn about different cultures; it made me a better person. I wouldn't trade the time I competed for anything. — Wyomia Tyus

I think everybody gets their recognition sometime down the road, and I have never been one to seek it. Besides, it has been that way throughout my career, especially in college. — Andre Ethier

TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics. — Ambrose Bierce

No one had more impact on my career than Gil Hodges. Playing for him was a
learning experience, and he was a tower of strength. Not everbody liked him, but
everybody respected him. He went about his job in a very professional manner,
and it caused me to do the same with my job. — Tom Seaver

You know, a lot of girls go out with me just to further their careers ... damn anthropologists. — Emo Philips

I grew up with my career being thrust upon me. It took me a long time to believe that I could do more than that one aspect of our business. — Angelina Jolie

Donald [Trump] has had a long career of using great wealth and power trying to bully others. — Ted Cruz

I have learnt not to make plans in life, because a lot of time you make a plan that is not going to work for you. Right now I am working on my career and trying to be genuine to my work. If you respect what you have got, God will give you what you need. — Katrina Kaif

The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession. — Jamaica Kincaid

A lot of folks feel like my brother and me or other politicians chart out their careers from Day 1 until the end. I've never been like that. — Joaquin Castro

Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence and thus each obstacle is a comrade-in-arms forcing you to become better ... or quit. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future. — Og Mandino

Learning to code is useful no matter what your career ambitions are. — Arianna Huffington

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing." — Rob Corddry

[On Washington, D.C.:] There was no other city in the world where rumor fed upon itself so virulently. Whispers wiped out careers just as cholera destroyed its human victims. — Evelyn Anthony

There are two ways to look at my publishing career. One is that I'm a novelist churning out books, who is eight into a series; the other way is that I'm a cartoonist, just starting out. Most cartoonists have long careers: Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for 50 years. — Jeff Kinney

There are always seasons to a career and perhaps always the grass is often greener, you're often looking at other people's careers going, "Damn, they get all the good roles. Why didn't I read that? Why didn't they ask me to do that?" — Jude Law

I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers. — George Takei

Life has a balance and natural order. I'm not fighting the flow anymore. My career right now is very up. It's happening naturally and it's happening well. — Irene Cara

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success. — Rex Reed

The world dotes on its lunatics, whether saintly or sadistic, and commemorates their careers. Psychopaths make terrific material for news agencies and movie studios; their exploits always draw a crowd. But the moment a discouraging word is spoken, some depressing knowledge, that crowd either disperses or goes on the attack. It is depression not madness that cows us, demoralization not insanity that we dread, disillusionment of the mind not its derangement that imperils our culture of hope. — Thomas Ligotti

A third felicity of age is that it has found expression. The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who would live beyond their nature-given span lose their framework, and with it lose a proper sense of relationship to those who are younger, gaining only the resentment of youth for encroaching on its careers and resources. The fact that there is a limited right time to do the rewarding things in our lives is what creates the urgency to do them. Otherwise, we might stagnate in procrastination. The very fact that at our backs, as the poet cautions his coy mistress, we "always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near" enhances the world and makes the time priceless. — Sherwin B. Nuland

There are actors in this town who made important careers for a long, long period just by taking the parts that Cary Grant turned down. — Louis Jourdan

Just because you have the resources today doesn't mean the timing is right. No doubt, ambition and energy have led to the creation of many great businesses and careers, but timing is critical. — Nick Vujicic

I really don't think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what any role does for me. — Kristen Stewart

I tell people in their careers, 'Look for growth. Look for the teams that are growing quickly. Look for the companies that are doing well. Look for a place where you feel that you can have a lot of impact.' — Sheryl Sandberg

The image of the copy editor is of someone who favours a rigid consistency, a mean person who enjoys pointing out other people's errors, a lowly person who is just starting on her career in publishing and is eager to make an impression, or, at worst, a bitter, thwarted person who wanted to be a writer and instead got stuck dotting the i's and crossing the t's and otherwise advancing the careers of other writers. — Mary Norris

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. — Tony Shalhoub

We are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison-inmates. And whenever we feel this, such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us, that all our morality appears as a plaster hiding a sore it can never cure, and all our well-doing as the hollowest substitute for that well-being that our lives ought to be grounded in, but alas! are not so. — William James

The best piece of advice I ever received about being a writer came from my brother Lee. I was just starting out and he told me that if I wanted to have a long career, I had to be versatile, that I shouldn't just think of myself in one way, because there would come a time when maybe that one thing wasn't working out for me - and I'd still want to earn a living as a writer. — Tod Goldberg

Careers are built on relationships. Even if it's a bad movie, even if I know it's a bad movie, even if it's a team of filmmakers that I know are going to be difficult, that I know are going to really make me work extra hard, it's fundamentally the same process. — Christophe Beck

You just plant a few seeds, cultivate the shoots, and watch your career grow and branch out. It takes time and dedication. There are no overnight success stories in the music business! — Christopher Tin

It seems to me that if God felt it best to delay marriage into the latter part of your twenties, He would also see fit to delay the hormonal urge to want to have sex. Or perhaps it was never His intent to delay marriage in an effort to "become more independent," "enjoy singlehood," and "build our careers. — Vicki Courtney

Nothing helps an artist's career more than a little death and obscurity. — Dan Simmons

There's more student debt than credit card debt! Everywhere I go, I run into young people trying to build careers while they keep shelling out money on their education loans. If the economy is looking for a new generation of home-buyers, I can't imagine they'll get it from these folks. — Gail Collins

I think if you've won one, quit while you're ahead. I loved doing it, though. If you get an opportunity that great, grab it, as it won't come along again. Until I read in the papers I did it to 'rescue my career'. — Tony Blackburn

Leaders' careers will usually be determined by their handling of one or two critical events that no one could possibly anticipate or plan for. — Tom Peters

I finished my career the way I wanted to. — Michael Phelps

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first. — Benjamin Franklin

I can be highly competitive, which is ultimately why I chose yoga as a career. I thought it would drain the competitive drive out of me and allow me to be present and content. The yoga world has become highly competitive since then and it used to drive me crazy until I realized there's work for everyone. — Kathryn Budig

It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble. — John Maynard Smith

When you go through certain moments of your career and you're struggling, it just takes time. Time heals, when you're a little bit down. — Pete Sampras

I grew up being the girl who would always tune in to watch famous people talk about their careers, how they handled scandals and mega fame. I'm trying to pick up tips. — Rebecca Black

There is no doubt about how hard it is to stay on top in any sport, but to do it in an individual sport for the majority of your career, it is not easy. — Pete Sampras

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

I've always been very focused on my career. But, it's good to have people [say], "Okay, you need a vacation." "I do? Oh yeah, you're right. I think I do." — Scarlett Johansson

Our politics suffers from a shortage of people who put character and country before career and personal gain. — Cal Thomas

The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It's no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote. — Daniel J. Levitin

Writing isn't a career choice. It's self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off. — Alain De Botton

I think every album serves as a step in your career. — Wade Bowen

Would I sacrifice a friendship to take a step forward in my political career? Thus far in my political career, I have been spared from having to make such a decision, thank God. And I can't imagine what it must be like. — Martin Schulz

This is a great time in our lives and careers. — Nick Lachey

The different sacred gifts serve a divine purpose. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I have the good fortune of knowing both John McCain and Donald Trump well, both men have more in common than the today's media hype would have you believe. Both blazed trails in their careers and love our great nation. — Sarah Palin

Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one. — Jon Krakauer

Actors sure have stories. We always have stories. At the end of our careers, all we have to take with us is our stories, and we have many of them. — Michael Eklund

My career is one thing in my life that I don't plan. — Jennifer Lawrence

Make sure you work at a place which gives you opportunities to learn, travel, explore, interact with intellectuals and new work skills. — Abhishek Ratna

But on the other hand, I look back at my career sometimes and can't believe how fast everything has gone and how much I've been able to accomplish. — Karrie Webb

Rodeo careers can end without warning, as quick as the next try at an eight-second ride. — John Branch

I have always wanted to do an acoustic record from the very beginning of my career. I was a coffeeshop artist where everything I did was acoustic. — Jason Mraz