Whether you are talking about education, career, or service, you are talking about life. And life must really have joy. It’s supposed to be fun.
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselling and scraping and polishing.
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
An artist’s career always begins tomorrow.
—James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American Painter, Etcher
The first essential in a boy’s career is to find out what he’s fitted for, what he’s most capable of doing and doing with a relish.
—Charles M. Schwab (1862–1939) American Businessperson
No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
A career is born in public – talent in privacy.
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) American Actor, Model, Singer
Do you want a successful career or a close relationship with your family? Both! Do you want a focus on business or have fun and play? Both! Do you want money or meaning in your life? Both! Do you want to earn a fortune or do the work you love? Both! Poor people always choose one, rich people choose both.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Professionals are people who can do their job when they don’t feel like it. Amateurs are people who can’t do their job when they do feel like it.
—Anonymous
My gift is that I’m not beautiful. My career was never about looks. It’s about health and being in good shape.
—Shirley MacLaine (b.1934) American Actress, Dancer, Activist
In the course of heir careers in the American schools of today, most students take hundreds, if not thousands, of tests. They develop skill to a highly calibrated degree in an exercise that will essentially become useless immediately after their last day in school.
—Howard Gardner (b.1943) American Cognitive Psychologist
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Activist, Political Advocate
I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.
—Lou Holtz (1893–1980) American Stage Performer
The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Look around the habitable world: how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
A little integrity is better than any career.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Work to become, not to acquire.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
Great performers are, by definition, abnormal; they strive throughout their entire careers to separate themselves from the pack.
—John Eliot (b.1971) American Psychologist, Academic
The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
If I had my career over again? Maybe I’d say to myself, speed it up a little.
—James Maitland Stewart (1908–97) American Film Actor
For many people a job is more than an income—it’s an important part of who we are. So a career transition of any sort is one of the most unsettling experiences you can face in your life.
—Paul Clitheroe (b.1955) Australian Financial Analyst
Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea. This talent and this call depend on his organization, or the mode in which the general soul incarnates itself in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. His ambition is exactly proportioned to his powers. The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base. Every man has this call of the power to do somewhat unique, and no man has any other call. The pretence that he has another call, a summons by name and personal election and outward “signs that mark him extraordinary, and not in the roll of common men,” is fanaticism, and betrays obtuseness to perceive that there is one mind in all the individuals, and no respect of persons therein.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
To hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.
—Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–73) American Head of State, Political leader
The best career advice to give to the young is “Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (1928–2021) English Journalist, Writer, Columnist
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot…And I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely…Why I succeed.
—Michael Jordan (b.1963) American Sportsperson, Businessperson
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Analyzing what you haven’t got as well as what you have is a necessary ingredient of a career.
—Grace Moore (1898–1947) American Operatic Soprano
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