Career Quotes

I always revered people that I thought had an idea and proceeded through with it. I guess I've been that way since the day I called my father and told him I was going to study acting and maybe try to see if I could do well with that, and he told me: "Don't do that. You don't want to do that, that's just dream stuff. Get a legitimate job and move forward."

I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her.

If I weren't doing what I'm doing now, the actress thing, the star business, if you want to call it that, whatever it is, I'd be in an asylum. I'm sure of it.

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I'm not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I'm 50?

Love what you do; Do what you love.

Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire.

Every man is captain of his career and there must be cooperation all around if he is to get what he wants out of life.

It likes it when you don’t depend on it. It will reward you every time you don’t act needy. It will chase you if you act like other things (passion, friendship, family, longevity) are more important to you. If your career is a bad boyfriend, it is healthy to remember you can always leave and go sleep with somebody else.

What is the recipe for successful achievement? Choose a career you love. Give it the best there is in you. Seize your opportunities. And be a member of the team.

I only got the opportjnity to co-host a talk show because I failed at news.

When you start out in comedy, or probably in a lot of things, you want it to happen fast. You don't want to see yourself having to do this for seven years before you start to get some feedback.

I think, as far as branching out with acting, it would take something really right on the mark to distract me from music, because music is everything to me.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

Always be looking for that which you do well and that which you love doing, and when you find those two things together — man, you got it.

I don't know if I could do this with the same energy, and in the same way - all the costume changes and glitter and hair and makeup - all the time. When I'm in my 50s, I kind of think I'll want to be in a garden.

At 25, I was in the audience of my first professional speaker, Bob Bales. His presentation got my attention. I had never seen anyone having so much fun 'at work' and getting paid for it!

An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.

You have two choices: You can make a living, or you can design a life.

What I know is, if you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. I truly believe the reason I've been so financially successful is because my focus has never been on the money.

I haven't stopped working since I was 10.

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.

I've never had a "hankering" to direct. I can perform, but I can't write on that level. I tend to go off on tangents. Directing also requires a kind of specificity and I don't have it.

You have this idea that you'd better keep working otherwise people will forget. And that was dangerous.

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

The idea of having a steady job is appealing.

Well, I don't think there's any need for people to focus on my career.

I was trying to get out of the night clubs and was thinking maybe I'll go to the colleges now; that's where you can speak your mind.

It was the most earnest ambition I ever had....Not that I ever really wanted to be a preacher, but because it never occurred to me that a preacher could be damned. It looked like a safe job.

The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.

Comedy pays the bills if I can't find a film.

I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over ten million dollars when I was 24, and over a hundred million dollars when I was 25 and... it wasn't that important — because I never did it for the money.

I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I'm very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I'm feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It's gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

I'm much more open to being a supporting actor right now. At the age of 60, I'll be second fiddle. Fine. I'm happy to do it.

I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, 'If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.'

Treat your career like a bad boyfriend...Your career wont take care of you. It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around... You have to care about your work, but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.

I started taking ballet lessons when I was 4, and I was performing in ballet companies when I was 10, and I did summer stock in Miami Beach when I was 12, and finally I said, 'I gotta go to Broadway.'

I should say in general the advantage of education is to better fit a man for life's work. I would advise young men to take a college course, as a rule, but think some are just as well off with a thorough business training.

It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.

Every day, you're only as good as your last show.

I was only a leading man for a minute; now I'm a character actor.

I've been very careful about what I say yes to and what I say no to. And I think seriously always about... this may be a good idea right now or it may be a lot of money right now, but will it be good for me five years from now? Will it be fun? Will it make me hate myself? I think about all of those things.

I'm suffering from oxygen deprivation. It's overwhelming watching your career go by.

In my fifth-grade yearbook - it's right up there on the top shell - the last page says, "What about your future?" and under my name, it says, "When I grow up, I would like to be either an actor, a radio announcer, an impersonator or a comedian."

Maybe we can change some kid's life & stop him from becoming a welder or a sleazy lawyer.

Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, 'I'll get a bigger job, then I'll learn how to be a leader.' But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn't a position, it's a process.

I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.

Sir Alex has a special place in my life. In fact, he was the main man. I was not famous, I was not a star. I arrived at Old Trafford as just another young talent. He was the one who told me to do all the right things. He gave me the opportunity to play in one of the biggest clubs in the world. So he is one of the most important people in the world for me. I worked with Sir Alex for a few years and I know he deserves ­everything that he has achieved in his career. He works so hard, he is clever, he has experience, he is a human guy.

Illness and fatigue can be career ending. It mean the fans are sick and tired of you.

I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age?

It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to reveal everything that he knows: and in a profession in which one is a baby at 50 and middle-aged at seventy-five, it is natural that anyone who has not actually been disgraced should feel that he still has a future.

I never look at a high point in my career. Everyone thinks about the Spinks fight, but that fight only lasted 91 seconds, so it's hard to say it defined my career.

I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.

You should not confuse your career with your life.

Jail is no place for a young fellow. There's no advancement.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

I said that my father was not a politician. I, instead, think I am. But not in the sense of being interested in a political career - rather in the sense that I think it necessary to strive to build a certain India, the India I want.

Never get married in college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake.