Quotes on Work

One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.

Work takes on new meaning when you feel you are pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it's just a job, and life is too short for that.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

In life, people tend to wait for good things to come to them. And by waiting, they miss out. Usually, what you wish for doesn't fall in your lap; it falls somewhere nearby, and you have to recognize it, stand up, and put in the time and work it takes to get to it. This isn't because the universe is cruel. It's because the universe is smart. It has its own cat-string theory and knows we don't appreciate things that fall into our laps.

And I think my daughter knows now that our life is split in two. Half of the year is spent with Mommy working and the other is spent with no work in sight.

In professional work - certainly in the arts and graphics - 99% of people have zero courage. They blow with the wind.

You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.

What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes it.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

What is it that you like doing? If you don't like it, get out of it, because you'll be lousy at it. You don't have to stay with a job for the rest of your life, because if you don't like it you'll never be successful in it.

I respect the fact that a director has studied the text and the road map of work before us, the subtleties, interconnections, underpinnings... His job is to paint the entire picture and knows all the colors that have to be in it.

That's my job: work hard, win, and inspire.

In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.

I am different as soon as I am on the pitch, because I had to fight so much and work so hard to become a professional footballer, so I have to give everything that I can.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!

I'm sick of people sittin' in chairs stating their problems. Then we roll the videotape... then we have our experts on the topic... I'm in the 'What's next?' phase of my career.

Some of what I consider my best work, and some of the best films that I've ever worked on, kind of disappear without a trace. There's no accounting for it. Something connects, or something doesn't.

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Look, I would say that anyone who does this work and doesn't have a strain of idealism is an adrenaline junkie or completely narcissistic. There is no other justification. You're risking your life, and if anything happens, it's our families who suffer tremendously.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.