979 Career Quotes

In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

If you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

I did not decide to become an officer to start a military career. I still wanted to be an agronomist and work in some remote corner of Russia after the war. I could not suppose that my country would change, and I would.

A lot of girls ask for advice on how to get into acting, and I'm kind of the worst person to ask, because it just kind of fell in my lap... I was just in the right place at the right time.

Well, I think every film student goes into film school thinking they want to write and direct their own movies, and they don't realize how much goes into it, and what a process it is.

From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

Taking a year off and going to school was the best thing I could have done after The Princess Diaries. It taught me that I don't need Hollywood or a job to make me happy.

I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.

Unfortunately, it's possible to be able to do something extremely well that nobody ever wants done.

My first big acting performance was in the Marilyn Monroe biography piece, and it required frontal nudity. I talked to Mira Sorvino, my co-star, about how nervous I was because I didn't know how my mom would react. She said, 'Can I be completely honest with you? I've seen your mom in interviews, and she seems pretty screwed up. I don't think there's much you could do to shock a broad like that.' And from that moment on it was big nipples to the wind!

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.

I am a person always full of contradictions... It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.

I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.

I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

I will never be below the title.

I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my make-up box.

In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.

Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.

Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.

Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves.

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.

All the information you need is available to you to have a successful career in music, if you're paying attention, and not closed off to anything. Remember, Perseverance is King.

A lot of musicians don't learn the business. You just have to be well-rounded in both areas. You have to understand publishing. You have to understand how you make money, what's in demand, what helps you make the most out of your talent.

I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.

A person can't make a career out of somebody else's invective.

I found it intellectually numbing, tedious in the extreme. All you were was a sort of high-powered social worker and perhaps not even a good one. So I won't miss that.

At one point Portillo was polishing his jackboots and planning the next advance. And the next thing is he shows up as a TV presenter. It is rather like Pol Pot presenting the Teletubbies.

I swear, if they hadn't tried to ruin me, I never would have ended up being a rapper. I probably would have been a preacher or something.

Look, I am selling records. This is what I do for a living. I am selling records. I never thought it was going to be a matter of life and death.

2Pac's Greatest Hits (1998)

When I was fifteen, I became a professional musician. I got involved with people and did certain things which led me to start making records and touring. And leaving Belfast and going to London and America, one thing led to another and I got caught up in the life that I'm living now...I was very young and i followed something. (1993)

Where I feel this has cost me is in the personality situation, where you're expected to be a personality. You not only have to write and record, but you have to go out and sell it. Well, I'm not a salesman, and I'm very bad at selling things. If I had to do that for a living, I'd probably be completely broke. I can't sell myself. And I don't even want to. That's something that's not going to change.

I've never been comfortable working live, and I'm still not. I was always more music-oriented and less star-oriented, which is why I've never been comfortable on big stages in big halls.

The people I was listening to never sold a lot of records. John Lee Hooker was never on the charts, so I was never in it from a commercial point of view. Other people expected things from my records, but I never did.

I don't think I will ever mellow out. I think if you mellow out, you get eaten up. You become like a commodity. So I don't think I will mellow out. It is not in my blood.

'Nijinsky's life can be simply summed up: ten years of growth, ten years of learning, ten years of dancing, thirty years of darkness. Altogether some sixty years. How long he will live on in people's memories, we can only guess.'

'Ric Flair will never retire! I like that. Well you will never retire as long as you keep on winning! You understand what I'm saying? As long as you keep on winning. The next time you lose a match your career is over!' (Talking to Ric Flair about is career threatening matches)

'I don't give a fuck about my body, about myself, about my face, about my reputation, about anything to do with my career. I put the focus on things that I think are important and beautiful. And they transcend me. And my work is much more interesting than me.'

En aimant tant la gloire, comment pouvez-vous vous obstiner a un projet qui vous la fera perdre?

I never wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be a drunk. Now I'm neither, but nobody can tell the difference.

The poet is a god, or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp.

I suppose my formula might be: dream, diversify and never miss an angle.

The opportunities are still there.

I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's.

Wes Clark has been a superb battalion commander and will be a superb brigade commander. He is an officer of the rarest potential and will clearly rise to senior general officer rank. He will be one of the Army's leaders in the 1990's.

The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, 'If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart.' It was like 'Ha-ha-ha-ha-Whoopi!' So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, 'You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg.'

In modern American style, his job, not his past, defined him.

I'm not a baby, I'm a MAN, I am an ANCHORMAN.

I've sent in my application to The Real World, so I'm puttin' a lotta eggs in that basket, the MTV basket. I also thought about getting a gun and becomin' a crack dealer. I wouldn't be, like, a mean crack dealer...I'd be a nice one. I'd just be like 'Hey, guys, what's up? You want some crack?'.

I'm not really an exhibitionist. I'm drawn to the outrageous stuff because it's fun, not because it's some deep compulsion. I'm not tortured, anger-stoked, deeply neurotic comic -- just a pretty low-key normal guy. A 'hey, the glass is half-full' kind of a guy. But please keep it quiet, or I may never work again.

'I go to U.C. Berkeley and I'm studying engineering, which is totally not related to music, but I really like music. I want to make music my living.'

One of the reasons I came to Harvard, after being in Chicago for so many years, is the critical mass of public intellectuals at Harvard.

A man must pretend not to be a writer.

Now, having a play on the same bill with a play by the one and only, the good and great, the impish and noble, the man and superman, George Bernard Shaw, is for me an honor, and I think a most fitting thing.

Always, Bill talked about being and becoming a writer, of all the stories and ideas inside him that had to come out. We knew he had been sending out stories all along and collecting rejection slips but the day in 1934 when Joe Danysh and I arrived at the front door of the gallery and found the envelope addressed to us both, we knew it had really begun. Inside were two one dollar bills, two street car transfers and a card which read 'One for the, money / one for the show / one For Virginia / and one for Joe.' Signed William Shakespeare.

I was supremely confident my flair for atmosphere and characterization would sparkle alongside the numbing mulch ground out by studio hacks. Certainly the space atop my mantel might be better festooned by a gold statuette than by the plastic dipping bird that now bobbed there ad infinitum.

Try to know everything of something and something of everything.

I found it intellectually numbing, tedious in the extreme. All you were was a sort of high-powered social worker and perhaps not even a good one. So I won't miss that.

At one point Portillo was polishing his jackboots and planning the next advance. And the next thing is he shows up as a TV presenter. It is rather like Pol Pot presenting the Teletubbies.

I've never considered playing music to have anything to do with being 'professional'.

On what she would probably do if she weren't performing.

On becoming her own person as a professional musician.

I'm trapped now, please rescue me.

Ne me parle pas de travail a la chaine Je veux pas finir comme Kurt Cobain (Don't talk to me about working on the assembly line/I don't wanna end like Kurt Cobain)

In the early days when I was drinking ... I had a very blurry line about where those two were... but I mean, that happens when you drink twenty-two hours a day. I would just sit and drink. I didn't know whether or not I was supposed to be Alice when I went out for dinner and was a little lit. Then there was the question about whether or not I should wear the make up because I didn't really want to disappoint anyone. Was I supposed to get into trouble? Was I supposed to get arrested that night? All of those questions went through my mind. You have to remember though who my older brothers and sisters were though--guys like Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and all the people who were living that life. After they all died, I just sat there and went, 'if one generation is going to learn from the next the truth is going to have to be that you don't have to die to be your character.' I figured then that I had better be able to separate the two. When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt - I play him for everything he is worth, but when I'm offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. .. I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that's when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. . If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time - I'd either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can't be Alice all the time. Jim Morrison couldn't be Jim Morrison, so he died. Jimi Hendrix couldn't be Jimi Hendrix, so he died. That's really what killed Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and all the way down the line. They were all animated characters who couldn't live up to their lifestyle, so I said that I needed to be able to separate the two - that's why I'm still here.

The guy should never ever play football again

More than anything else in that ECW dressing room, Tommy Dreamer, maybe more than anybody else in the wrestling industry, you are willing to pay the price: to sweat, to bleed, to suffer. You're willing to bare that cross and I said 'Tommy, don't do it.' Because, you see, in order to sacrifice and bare that cross for them, it means I've got to suffer too, and I'm telling you from the voice of experience that they're not worth it, Tommy. They're not worth it! You see, you've got the choice, not me. I've made my bed of nails, and I've got no other choice but to be powerbombed on it! But you see Tommy, the world is smiling at you, the wrestling business is smiling at you, and don't you frown back on it! I'm going to take you back to a very deciding point in my life--a time when I believed in something. A time when I thought that my face and my name made a difference. Do you remember the night, Tommy Dreamer, because it's embedded in my skull, it's embedded in my heart, and it's embedded in every nightmare that I will ever have. As Terry Funk took a broken bottle and began slicing and dicing Cactus Jack, the pain was so much that I'll be honest with you Tommy. The pain was so much that I wanted to say I quit, Terry Funk, I give, I wave the flag, and I'm a coward--just please don't hurt me anymore. Then I saw my saving grace. You see, Tommy, I looked out in that audience, my adoring crowd, and I saw two simple words that changed my life. 'Cane Dewey.' Somebody had taken the time and the effort and the thought to make a sign that said, 'Cane Dewey' and I saw other people around, as every moment in my life stopped and focused in on that sign and the pain that shot through my body became distant memory--replaced by the pain that will be embedded in my skull 'til my dying day! 'Cane Dewey.' 'Cane Dewey.' Dewey Foley is a three-year-old boy, you sick sons of bitches! You ripped out my heart, you ripped out my soul, you took everything I believed in and you flushed it down the damn toilet. You flushed my heart, you flushed my soul, and now it sickens me to sit back and see other people making the same mistake. You see, Tommy Dreamer I have to listen to my little boy say every day of my life 'Daddy, I miss Atlanta,' and I say, 'That's too bad son, because your dad traded in the Victorian house for a sweatbox on Long Island. Your Dad traded in a hundred-thousand dollar contract, guaranteed money, insurance, respect and the name on the dotted line of the greatest man in the world - to work for a scumbag who operates out of a little pissant pawn shop in Philadelphia.' You don't expect me to be bitter? Tommy, when you open your heart, when you open you soul, and it gets shit on, it tends to make Jack a very mean boy. and so, I say to you--before I take these aggressions out on you--to look at your future and realize that the hardcore life is a lie, that these letters behind me are a blatant lie, that those fans who sit there and say 'He's Hardcore He's Hardcore He's Hardcore', wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire, you selfish son of a bitch! But, I want you to understand Tommy though he's hurt you time and time again, deep in his heart, Raven wants you to understand that the hatred I have in here is not for you. No, no--far removed. You see, Tommy, I'm not doing this because I hate you--I love you, man! I only want the best for you--but when I hear that WCW called up your number and you said, 'No thank you' -- well, it makes my blood run cold. As cold as that night in the ECW arena. And so I have got a moral obligation - you see Tommy, I'm on the path of the righteousness and righteous men wield a lot of power. So if I've got to drag you by your face to that telephone call and dial collect and say, 'Hello Eric, it's me, Cactus, and though I know I've burned my bridge, and I'll never be taken back with open arms--I've got a wrestler who would gladly trade in his ECW shirt for a pair of green suspenders.' And Tommy, just think of that sound in your ear when Eric says, 'Welcome home, Tommy Dreamer, welcome home.' I love being right.'

Indeed, Barack Obama has exceptional qualities and deserves kudos for his achievement. He is genteel, articulate, poised and charming. He is a Harvard-educated lawyer, yet he remains accessible to the common man. He has been married since 1992, has two lovely daughters and is by all accounts a devoted family man. He is a pious Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ. He has virtually sky-rocketed into the national spotlight-winning a landslide victory in his Senate race in 2004; he became the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history and the only current African American Senator. His fame has been enhanced by the publication of two-bestsellers, Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006). He now trails only behind Hillary in his bid to secure the nomination of his party. And he has done all of this even before he celebrates his forty-sixth birthday later this summer.

'I owe Bob more than I owe anybody else in the game. There will never be another like him.' ** Notes: Kenny Dalglish on Bob Paisley

Now largely forgotten, Hughes was one of the great political figures of his age, both in America and on the world stage, and was very much the intellectual rival of his opponent in the narrowly lost presidential election of 1916, Woodrow Wilson. Hughes public career was distinguished and wide-ranging. A progressive Republican New York City lawyer catapulted overnight into the public eye by his service on public commissions investigating corruption in the utility and insurance industries, Hughes served as governor of New York from 1907 to 1910, stepping down to accept William Howard Taft's appointment as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite pressures from supporters in the Republican Party, Hughes refused to leave the court to run for president in 1912; in 1916, he declined to seek his party's nomination (or, indeed, even to indicate a willingness to accept it) but having received it, stepped down from the court to take up the race against Wilson.

'This is her life long dream.' Bob Jamieson, president of RCA

'I'm a fighter. I don't quit. I'm probably going to record when I'm dead 'Live from his coffin'.' - on the nerve injury to his arm that brought his career to a temporary halt

...he felt frustrated, his sense of fate and direction subverted by banalities - the frustration of the man who, having thought himself following his destiny, finds he is actually on the A318 to New Malden.

The Rock has dream, has a dream that he's winning the Royal Rumble, going on to Wrestlemania and from coast to coast, Wisconsin to China, and back to Wisconsin! Sea to shining sea, The Rock one more time on top of the mountaintop, WWF Champion! And you see just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr had a dream, well we all have dreams, but there has been one dream that has become a reality to The Rock, one dream thats becoming true to The Rock. Day after day, night after night, 24 hours a day,.... 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and that one dream is The Rock forever whipping ass, whipping ass....Thank God Almighty, The Rock is whipping ass! If ya smell....what The Rock is cooking!

As early as January 1934, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was jailed by the Dollfuss Government on account of his Nazi views and sent with other leading National Socialists into the concentration camp Kaisersteinbruch. He caused and led a hunger strike and forced the government to dismiss 490 National Socialist prisoners. In the following year he was jailed again, because of suspicion of high treason, and committed to the court martial of Wels (Upper Danube). After an investigation of many months, the accusation of high treason collapsed; but he was sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment for subversive activities. After the spring of 1935, Dr. Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian SS, the right to practice his profession having been suspended because of his National Socialist views. It rebounds to his credit that in this important position he succeeded through energetic leadership in maintaining the unity of the Austrian SS, which he had built up, in spite of all persecution, and succeeded in committing it successfully at the right moment.

The main point of Flying Down to Rio is the screen promise of Fred Astaire.... He's assuredly a bet after this one, for he's distinctly likeable on the screen, the mike is kind to his voice and as a dancer he remains in a class by himself. The latter observation will be no news to the professsion, which has long admitted that Astaire starts dancing where the others stop hoofing

I am the morning DJ... At W.O.L.D. Playin' all the hits for you... Wherever you may be. The bright good morning voice... Who is heard, but never seen! Feelin' all of 45.... Goin' on 15.

Hillary Clinton said that her childhood dream was to be an Olympic athlete. But she was not athletic enough. She said she wanted to be an astronaut, but at the time they didn't take women. She said she wanted to go into medicine, but hospitals made her woozy. Should she be telling people this story? I

Jackie Speier -- moving on, moving up: Survivor of Jonestown ambush plans run for lieutenant governor, November 16, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle

'And I was wondering why it took so long for me to get to a World Series -- 4200+ games, 30+ years ... Well, I guess the Good Lord was just waiting for me to put on the pinstripes.' 1996

The man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant

'Jude Law is one of the finest actors of our time ...' - Sean Penn

'Through one of those fantastical phone calls when your agent calls you and says 'Stephen Spielberg is on the phone, he wants to speak to you about his next film.' And once you've peeled yourself of the ceiling you go, *clears throat* Yeah, great.' - about how he got the role of Gigolo Joe

Jane took me to another level because she's truly a wonderful writer. I'd put things together in the past and struggled with them. And then I met Jane. ... I was doing my Edith Ann album in '71 - the album came out in '72. She'd done a thing on television called J.T. - it was about a kid in Harlem - and she won a Peabody for it. I later learned it was the first thing she'd ever written. It was written as an After School Special, but they played it in prime time - and they played it every year after that for about 25 years, or something. Anyway, I saw it and it was wonderful. It was poetic and sensitive and satiric and tender and funny and so many things compressed into this one hour. And I thought, 'Oh, God, this is exactly what I want in a monologue.' So I wrote Jane and asked her to help me do the Edith Ann album. I didn't hear from her for a while. Then, suddenly, about a week before I was supposed to go in and record, she sent me a lot of material. I persuaded her to come to California and help me produce it. Frankly, I was pretty taken with her as soon as I saw her. We just sort of clicked. We became a couple right away.