49 Professionalism Quotes

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

I'm against the draft. I believe we should have a professional military; it might be smaller, but it would be more effective.

As a journalist, my job is to be dispassionate. Suddenly to be the centre of a story and to be crying, it made me feel very insecure.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things and never to mingle professionally with each other, except at official functions, when we all wear ties and drink heavily and whoop it up like the natural, good-humored wild boys that we know in our hearts that we are..These occasions are rare, but they happen - despite the forked tongue of fate that has put us forever on different paths...

A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it; an amateur is one who can't when he does feel like it.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.

This could be the last and only opportunity I'd have to work with the great and lovely Audrey, and I was not missing it.

I only fuck up that bad about once every two months ... which is a pretty high fuck-up ratio for a professional musician, when you think about it.

Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft is not a natural act. So let's do it right, enjoy the view. Come on. (as Gunnery Sgt. Tom 'Gunny' Highway in 'Heartbreak Ridge' - 1986)

Mr. Llewellyn paused. Mr. Trout had begun to float about the room like something out of Swan Lake, and Mr. Llewellyn disapproved of this. He was apt to be a martinet in his dealings with his legal advisers, demanding that lawyers should behave like lawyers and leave eccentric dancing to the professionals. A man, he held, is either Fred Astaire or he is not Fred Astaire, and if he is not Fred Astaire he should not carry on like him.

I have made it a team rule that my players behave as gentlemen and dress as gentlemen. I wanted to end the popular conception that professional athletes were a bunch of roughnecks.

There are certain people in our business that are known as ladies, that are known to be classy and intelligent . . . I found out that [Gloria is] all of the above.

Because the managerial elites are now so large and have such a dominant effect on our educational system, we are actually teaching most people to manage, not to think. Not only do we not reward thought, we punish it as unprofessional.

'Jude was fabulous. ... He's great to work with. He's really just a nice guy. ...' Norah Jones [1]

'He's a wonderful, wonderful person. He's deeply professional and also incredibly funny ... he's a rip-roaring laugh ...' - Kate Winslet [3]

'Jude Law is a wonderful partner in these things. ... He's totally respectful. He's a very nice professional guy. He's the perfect person to do something like this with.' Cameron Diaz [4]

This script, it seems to me, is the work of professionals who yearned to be as charming as inspired amateurs can sometimes be.

The thing about Michael is he's hands down one of the most professional, most talented performers I have ever worked with. All the brouhaha aside, when it comes down to it you can have 60 choreographed dancers up there and you know which one Michael is.

We were stunned how petite she was in the flesh and she has the most beautiful skin. Not only that, she was nice, too. She arrived on time, no diva demands. She's gorgeous.

Such a proud moment of professionalism. You work for years crafting cogent satirical essays and the thing that everybody remembers is me making love to a Chiquita and bursting into laughter. What you can't see off camera is Jon started laughing first. And then I'm weak. As much as I want to make the audience laugh, I really want to make Jon laugh.

'The scientific industry has its exact counterpart in the kind of minds it harnesses: they no longer need to do themselves any violence in becoming their own voluntary and zealous overseers. Even if they show themselves, outside their official capacity, to be quite human and sensible being, they are paralysed by pathic stupidity the moment they begin to think professionally.'

Gentlemen, even if one allows that he is an important writer, are we next to invite an elephant to be Professor of Zoology?

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, waggery, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.

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

A gross but deflated old man, of cringing manners, inarticulate in speech and with the hygiene habits of a pig, and could not conceive how a man so utterly devoid of self respect could ever have been selected as a personal physician by anyone who had even a limited possibility of choice.

Of all the actors and actresses I've ever worked with, the hardest worker is Fred Astaire. He behaved like he was a young man whose whole destiny depended on being successful in his first film. He rehearses between takes, after takes - there's no limit to his professionalism

Come on, Fred, I'm not your sister, you know

Sakeasi Dikota, former Aide-de-Camp to Ratu Mara (1992-1994): 'Something that I learnt from Ratu Mara was his adherence to time .. he was a stickler for keeping up the time .. he was never, never late ... and he would ensure that all programmes were not late by a minute. Protocol was also high on his list of priority. I also admired his art of dressing immaculately ... he was always dressed according to the occasion ... something that young people can learn from him.'

Acting is just a job. It's an extraordinary job, but it's a job.

He does his stuff really well, he's got a real good screen presence and a lot of talent. He's more mature than I was at that age. He seems more worldly, seems to know his way around.

Jack Benny: We're a little late, so good night, folks.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

Dol Bonner, to her employee Amy Duncan, chapter 2: Bosh. I find a rival - but no, I won't flatter myself that Tecumseh Fox would consider himself a rival of Dol Bonner - I find an eminent detective in your apartment, and that alone is enough, without adding that he is concealed in your bedroom while I am discussing my business with you...

I'm just like Dr. Phil, except I have hair, and I don't help anybody.

Peter Jennings was a great man and the consummate professional. His reassuring presence will be missed by all of us.~ Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State