Professional Job Quotes & Sayings

My first job. I got fired from this MTV prank show, or I didn't make the cut of what ended up being, as we all know, Boiling Points. It was my first professional job and I was bragging. — Nick Kroll

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. — Sheldon Lee Compton

If you're a thorough professional, and they won't let you do a professional job, nobody's going to benefit from it. The people who produce it won't benefit. The people who buy it won't benefit from it. They're going to get a half-assed product. — Jack Kirby

One of the job requirements of Professional Sick Person is sleeping a lot, — John Green

If you are not willing to give a less experienced qualified professional a chance, don't complain you are charged double for a job worth half. — Mark W. Boyer

There are many more jobs out there than you have ever heard of. Your dream job might not yet exist. If you had told 'College Me' that I would become a professional YouTuber, I would've been like, "That is not a word, and it never should be." — John Green

It was brief, swift, and then it was done. It was a professional job. I needed to be kissed, and I was kissed. — Uma Thurman

To attain, and to keep, a professional-managerial job requires class-specific human capital. Developing and displaying that capital is a central preoccupation of upper-middle class life. — Susan T. Fiske

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it. — W. Somerset Maugham

I became a professional actor in Detroit and I was able to earn some money. It was a good job because it permitted me to study. It fit perfectly with school. — James Lipton

The Netherlands is a wonderful country," said Sigerius. "If you're determined to be a bad egg, there's a great big professional circle of friends ready to help you. Whoever doesn't have the balls to just get out and work, but does have a criminal record, is given a nice subsidized job. — Anonymous

Facebook is the social graph with the organizing principle around your friends and your social life. LinkedIn is the professional graph, organized around you, your job, your industry, your title and your function. At Chegg, we are building a student graph centered around you, as a student. — Dan Rosensweig

The search for one's first professional job is not unlike a magical love potion: when one wants to fall in love with the next thing one sees, one generally does. — Sloane Crosley

A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job. — Jamaica Kincaid

'Rent' was my first professional job, ever. — Aaron Tveit

I have a professional acquaintance whose recent eyelid job has left her with a permanent expression of such poleaxed astonishment that she looks at all times as if she had just read one of my books. — Florence King

I think George Mitchell is a consummate professional. He is the ideal selection to handle the job of special envoy if you choose to have a special envoy. — John F. Kerry

I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important. — Tom Hanks

I kept thinking, 'this must be the coolest job - I'd like to be a professional baseball player.' They were getting paid to play a game, and what a cool lifestyle that was. — Cal Ripken Jr.

Our job is not to amuse our readers. Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them. Our task is to continually hold up our government and our leaders to clear-eyed analysis, unaffected by professional spinmeisters and agenda-pushers. In these times, when those of us who are members of the 'reality-based community' are under relentless attack from both the right and the left, we must encourage, and our work must reflect, independent and non-ideological thinking. — Tony Auth

Captain Tervitt had been a real captain, for many years, on the lake boats. Now he had a job as a special constable. He stopped the cars to let the children cross the street in front of the school and kept them from sledding down the side street in winter. He blew his whistle and held up one big hand, which looked like a clown's hand, in a white glove. He was still tall and straight and broad-shouldered, though old and white-haired. Cars would do what he said, and the children, too. — Alice Munro

Playing on the PGA Tour and playing professional golf, I think it's what everyone has dreamed of doing - all the guys who are out here. I'm just happy to be able to call this a job, if you want to call it a job. — Rickie Fowler

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman
the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote. — Truman Capote

I'm never hard on people just because they annoy me on the show. I'm not emotional when I'm professional. Do I think there are people on the show who need to go home sooner than they do? Yes. I do. but I'm there to be professional and to be a judge and to give them my advice and my help and I take my job really seriously. — Kelly Cutrone

We're all pros already. 1) We show up every day 2) We show up no matter what 3) We stay on the job all day 4) We are committed over the long haul 5) The stakes for us are high and real 6) We accept remuneration for our labor 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs 8 ) We master the technique of our jobs 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world — Steven Pressfield

In a professional once engaged, the performance of the job comes first. — Garson Kanin

The resume focuses on you and the past. The cover letter focuses on the employer and the future. Tell the hiring professional what you can do to benefit the organization in the future. (12) — Joyce Lain Kennedy

My first professional job was actually at a place called Opryland U.S.A., which no longer exists, but I've been performing since I was a kid. — John Barrowman

I used to play the drums. When I was 11 I got my first professional job, I played drums in a cabary and played Elvis and stuff, I used to play left handed actually. Then I started to pick up the guitar when I was around 15, but I played the drums for a long time. — Francis Dunnery

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

The primary reason people seek job security is because that is what they are taught to seek, at home and at school..then with debt loads, they must cling even tighter to a job, or professional security, just to pay the bills. — Robert Kiyosaki

Having a calling or meaningful and fulfilling purpose in life does not necessarily mean being drawn to a certain kind of job, task, or professional mission. Many people are compelled instead to commit themselves to a particular set of values - ones that they infuse into every aspect of their life, regardless of the various roles they play or situations they address as they go through their daily lives. — Lama Surya Das

To me, first and foremost, basketball is a fun sport. It is a hobby, an interest. And second, it is a profession. I feel that I am very fortunate that I can find a professional job that I really, really love. — Yao Ming

Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist. — David Rees

My very first professional job was a cartoon, doing voices for the Mr. T cartoon in high school. — Phil LaMarr

My teachers encouraged me to audition for some professional work during our summer vacation. I landed my first job. It was for the National Theatre Company's Mimika Pantomime troupe. I ended up touring with them for the next two years. — Didi Conn

I feel like a young adult. In high school I never felt like my professional life and my personal life were at odds, because my job has never been to be a role model for young women or teenagers. — Tavi Gevinson

My job is to suggest and ratify and use any expertise that I might have gained over the 23 years in professional hockey to make our game a better game. — Bobby Hull

The Nightside CSI is only one man, pleasant enough, calm and easy going, and very professional. It probably helps that he has multiple personality disorder with a sub-personality for every speciality and discipline in his profession. One to handle fingerprints, another to examine blood splatter or look for magical residues ... He's really quite good at his job though he does tend to argue with himself.
Between himself he knows everything he needs to know. Each sub-personality has a different voice. Some of them are women. I've never asked. — Simon R. Green

Even if your job is a professional singer, we still dork out at home. — Sheena Easton

When you are serving volunteer professional military, you take an oath to the Constitution, not to a policy or a president and you swear to obey the lawful orders of the democratically elected government. And so at the end of the day you could table your personal political views and do your job. — Nathaniel Fick

We played hard and we partied hard. I'm not ashamed of that. I was no angel - I did some things I shouldn't have done, lived a lifestyle I shouldn't have lived. I had a blast at times; other times, I probably compromised my job, my duty to do my job, to be ready as a professional. — David Cone

Across industries and countries, there's a strong inverse correlation between performance and job security. Actors and directors are fired at the end of each film, so they have to deliver every time. Junior professors are fired by default after a few years unless the university chooses to grant them tenure. Professional athletes know they'll be pulled if they play badly for just a couple games. At the other end of the scale (at least in the US) are auto workers, New York City schoolteachers, and civil servants, who are all nearly impossible to fire. The trend is so clear that you'd have to be willfully blind not to see it. — Paul Graham

My first professional acting job was in 'Hair' during the Vietnam War. So I think I've always been drawn to projects with a social conscience. — Clarke Peters

My first job was playing 'Nurse 2' in a film by Ben Elton called 'Maybe Baby,' and the first actors I worked with professionally were Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson. I was totally star-struck. I got that job on my final day of drama school, so it was a nice bridge into the professional world. — Shelley Conn

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated. — Denzel Washington

I didn't know why I was coming to this room. Someone just told me to go to Sam Raimi's office. I knew that I uniquely had the comics version of his job, which was to take Spider-Man and put him into the modern day. But I thought, "Maybe he wants to tell me to cut it out." So I come in, it's in his office, and then Stan Lee comes in, and I'd only ever met Stan as a fan, not as a professional. And then they sit us down on a couch, and roll in an AV cart with a TV on it and go, "We're going to show you the first cut of Spider-Man." — Brian Michael Bendis

The relationship between any two communities in the global economy is not unlike a marriage. As couples counselors advise, relationships falter when two partners are too interdependent. When any stress affecting one partner - the loss of a job, an illness, a bad-hair day - brings down the other, the couple suffers. A much healthier relationship is grounded in the relative strength of each partner, who each should have his or her own interests, hobbies, friends, and professional identity, so that when anything goes wrong, the couple can support one another from a position of strength. Our ability to love, like our ability to produce, must be grounded in our own security. And our economy, like our love, when it comes from a place of community, can grow without limit. — Michael H. Shuman

If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. — Red Adair

We're more than just our job titles or our list of professional accomplishments. — Arianna Huffington

As a leader, there are professional skills and traits that are expected. It's your job to identify and exhibit them so you can be challenged and judged professionally as a leader - and not as a woman. — Liz Weber

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

As a professional, you can afford to pick some stocks and be wrong about a few of them. To keep your job, you cannot take the risk of being seen to be wrong about the 'big picture' for very long. — Jeremy Grantham

In July of 2010, I lost my finance job in Chicago. Instead of updating my resume and looking for a similar job, I decided to forget about money and have a go at something I truly enjoyed. I'd purchased a semi-professional camera earlier that year and spent my free time taking photos in downtown Chicago. — Brandon Stanton

As she began rattling off a number of multi-syllabic Latin-derived medical terms, he had to rearrange himself in his leathers. Something about her getting all professional made him want to get all up in her. Probably had to do with the bonding thing - he wanted to mark this spectacular person as his, so the whole world knew they needed to back the fuck off. Jane was the only female who had ever gotten his attention and held it. And yeah, if he had to wax psychological on the situation, it was probably because her single-minded passion for her job, shit, her relentless commitment to excellence, made him feel a little like he was always chasing her just to keep up. On so many levels he was a typical predator: The chase was more electric than the capture and consumption. And with Jane, there was always something to pursue. "Hello? V?" When their eyes met, he frowned. "Sorry. Distracted. — J.R. Ward

My personal life is lived as 'me,' but my professional life is lived as other people. In other words, when I go to the office, I lie down, dream, and become 'someone else.' That's my job. — Wallace Shawn

When you're a professional you gotta do it [your job] when you don't feel like doing it. — Jeff Bridges

There are three qualities that make someone a true professional. These are the ability to work unsupervised, the ability to certify the completion of a job or task and, finally, the ability to behave with integrity at all times. — Subroto Bagchi

My particular memory is of a quail-pie. Quails may be alright for Moses in the desert, but, if they are served in the form of pie at dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round from guest to guest. The countess having shuddered at it and resumed her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended: the job really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated the on the surface of the crust at which it would be most hopeful to dig for quails. — A.A. Milne

Eisenhower's speech contained an unsubtle dig at Rockefeller, in the guise of a dig at Kennedy: "Just as the Biblical Job had his boils, we have a cult of professional pessimists, who ... continually mouth the allegations that America has become a second-rate military power." He was proceeded at the podium by his black special assistant E. Frederic Morrow, who had flown in with the President on Air Force One. "One hundred years ago my grandfather was a slave," radio and TV audiences heard. "Tonight I stand before you as a trusted assistant to the President of the United" - and then the networks cut away for fear of offending their Southern affiliates. — Rick Perlstein

My first professional job was to sell heavy-duty waterless cookware. — Zig Ziglar

I'm just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it's all okay because it's just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they're bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever. — Paul Murray

The secret to recruiting is not in convincing people, but in sorting people. You can wear yourself out and become discouraged, working with the same "empty oysters." Your job as a professional recruiter is only to sort through the prospects until you find one who wants to be a distributor. It is ten times easier to locate a prospect who wants to work, than to convince an unwilling disinterested prospect to work. — Tom "Big Al" Schreiter

Even the worst job has its benefits and so does being a professional literary agent, and - I know I said this at the time but I still believe it - the worst job is the one that you know is wrong for you, but you still do it. You're afraid to quit. — John Hodgman

However we resolve the issue in our individual homes, the moral challenge is, put simply, to make work visible again: not only the scrubbing and vacuuming, but all the hoeing, stacking, hammering, drilling, bending, and lifting that goes into creating and maintaining a livable habitat. In an ever more economically unequal world, where so many of the affluent devote their lives to ghostly pursuits like stock trading, image making, and opinion polling, real work, in the old-fashioned sense of labor that engages hand as well as eye, that tires the body and directly alters the physical world tends to vanish from sight. The feminists of my generation tried to bring some of it into the light of day, but, like busy professional women fleeing the house in the morning, they left the project unfinished, the debate broken off in mid-sentence, the noble intentions unfulfilled. Sooner or later, someone else will have to finish the job. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Professional loyalty now flows "horizontally" to and from your network rather than "vertically" to your boss, as Dan Pink has noted. — Reid Hoffman

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

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

Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't want to do it — David Halberstam

Yo, we was here first!" Bandanna joined the shouting match.
"Screw you. I'm here now! What gives you the right to come in here ten minutes too early and screw up my job, anyway? Go the fuck home and leave this to a professional."
Bandanna laughed in disbelief. "A professional? Look at you, man! Who the hell does a holdup in a freaking suit? Not just a suit - a shitty suit that you've been sleeping in for three weeks."
"Oh," Harry said quietly. "Perfect. Now you're slamming me for getting caught in the rain." He began to shout again. "When I planned this job, I didn't plan for it to rain, all right? Can you give me a fucking break here - — Suzanne Brockmann

My mom was really busy when I was growing up, but she did a really good job in terms of balancing her home life with her professional life. She basically took me everywhere. — Condola Rashad

If I would take a job with a professional league, I need to be ready. — Thomas Dooley

I once had a young musician come to me and say that he wanted to be a professional musician. I asked him to write his list. When he came back to me, the three things in his life he most wanted were: to be paid for his music; to travel around the world; to meet new people. We came to the decision, after thinking really creatively, that if he got a job on a cruise ship, he would fulfill those goals. — Phil Keoghan

I have a problem with players who don't take the loss personally. At a professional level you should - it's our job, it's our livelihood, it's who we are at this level. Every loss should be taken that personal. — Hope Solo

The Apple Marketing Philosophy" that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all of the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities. — Walter Isaacson

If you have a profession that depends on what you look like, you can't blame somebody for caring about that. It's part of their job. So it's vanity but it's also not in a lot of cases. It's being professional. — James Franco

I was 23, and that was my first professional job. Anybody who has curly hair knows you don't want it to be brushed out because it becomes a never-ending tangle. — Judy Davis

Happiness is knowin' you've done a good job, whether it's professional or for another person ... — Elvis Presley

So for me the creative world isn't what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it's something that IS a job. Perhaps that's why I'm not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I've seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I've seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: "Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved."

I'm glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me. — Jamie Freveletti

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

Many women are simply bad at negotiating (their salaries). Many are happy if they succeed in returning to professional life. The main thing for them is that their job is at least somewhat compatible with their family life. But that's exactly where they are wrong. — Kristina Schroder

I got no support from USA Wrestling. I was competing against professional Russians that do nothing but wrestle for a living, and I was forced to take a job working for this lowlife loser, John du Pont, who I didn't want in my life. I just wanted the money. — Mark Schultz

I've done everything. I've sung, done records, plays ... It just so happened my first professional job was as a dancer. I've done the whole shebang, darling. But dancing was my first professional engagement in 1974. I got paid for it, so that was it, my vocation. But my parents weren't keen. They wanted me to be an accountant in Italy. Or a lawyer. They were furious. I had to run away. I had to leave the country. — Bruno Tonioli

I carried on acting during school holidays and was all set to go to drama school when I was offered my first professional job appearing in 'King David' with Richard Gere. — Gina Bellman

The central point of this final chapter is that - follow my logic carefully here - unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It's insights like this that separate the professional book author from the person with a real job.) — Dave Barry

If you asked my dad about selecting any kind of professional career, he'd tell you, "Don't make a date with a heart attack." Meaning: You've got to pace yourself and not forget to slow down. No job is forever. So relax and have some fun. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you don't take professional pride in your work, you're probably in the wrong job. — Dedy Budiman

The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition. — Vicki Robin

You know when you play in the big away games that the fans are going to be behind their team and will be booing you. As a professional you need to tune yourself out of that part of the game and concentrate on the job at hand. — David Beckham

My very, very first professional job was when I was 19 years old - I got a job doing an educational industrial film on Shell Motor Oil's oil products. I really put my heart into it - I wrote a script for it, I did a lot of research. — Renny Harlin

If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella. — Susanna Kaysen

Well, I don't know about objectivity, but I know for certain that it's always possible for a professional journalist who understands what he or she's up to to be fair, and that's the key word. Fairness to individuals, fairness to ideas, and to issues and whatever - that is critical, and that is also part and parcel of what the job. — Jim Lehrer

My very first professional job was with a theatre company in 1965 and the first job they gave me was literally shovelling sh*t. I was an assistant stage manager and they told me to clear out the prop store. I opened it up and no-one had been in there for 25 years and it was inches deep in rat sh*t. So before I could get anywhere I had to clear it up. I thought, 'All these years of training, the best drama school in the world, and this is what I'm doing.' — Martin Shaw

When you're a professional you do your job no matter what gets in the way. You might take a sick day, you might take a personal day, but then you show back up or you won't get paid. Everyone develops his/her own strategy for dealing with days that are not productive. — Charlaine Harris

Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why — Steven Pinker

Professional' does not necessarily mean that the person so labelled is good or knows what they are doing. In many a case, it merely means that they do whatever that they are a professional at for a living, not as a hobby. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I was a judo athlete, while taking modeling as my side job, before I eventually quit my professional sports career over a knee injury. — Joe Taslim

What was a very private childhood hobby turned into a very a public, professional job, and I think that there's a lot of inhibition that can grow from that. — Adrian Tomine

Lemuel Ayers had had a huge success producing and designing Kiss Me, Kate. He wanted to produce this as a musical. I got the job. It was a professional score. — Stephen Sondheim

The citizen's job is to be rude - to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt. — John Ralston Saul