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A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
Alistair Cooke
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Interpretation

What this quote means

A true professional excels in their work even when not motivated or inspired.

This quote emphasizes the essence of professionalism as the ability to perform at one's best regardless of personal feelings or circumstances. It suggests that true dedication and skill in one's field is demonstrated by the capacity to push through reluctance or lack of motivation to deliver quality work.

Themes

ProfessionalismDedicationWork EthicMotivationSuccess

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire employees when facing challenges.

More from Alistair Cooke

More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which - in the hands of someone like Herb Wind - can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli.
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Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men.
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Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
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Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.
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It is a wonderful tribute to the game or to the dottiness of the people who play it that for some people somewhere there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, an unplayable course, the wrong time of the day or year.
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