Job Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

To do a job effectively, one must set priorities. Too many people let their "in" basket set the priorities. On any given day, unimportant but interesting trivia pass through an office; one must not permit these to monopolize his time. The human tendency is to while away time with unimportant matters that do not require mental effort or energy. Since they can be easily resolved, they give a false sense of accomplishment. The manager must exert self-discipline to ensure that his energy is focused where it is truly needed.

Hyman G. Rickover

Courage never takes away fear; courage simply redistributes fear to get the job done.

It's an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous.

In 1964 something totally unexpected happened. I got a job I enjoyed.

My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

About Fear Factor:

Every now and then I'll be right in the middle of it and just go "What the fuck am I doing? There's a girl with a mouthful of animal dicks, and I'm telling her 'you can get more in there', and she's listening to me. That's my job? Oh, my guidance counselor owes me a fucking apology. That dude lacked vision."

When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. To me it wasn't parchesi played under parchesi rules. Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. Every man in the game, from the minors on up, is not only fighting against the other side, but he's trying to hold onto his own job against those on his own bench who'd love to take it away. Why deny this? Why minimize it? Why not boldly admit it?
Many a writer has said that I was "unfair." Well, that's not my understanding of the word. When my toes were stepped on, I stepped right back.

Only give me your word that if I increase your paper's circulation you'll give me a job.

Santiago Martínez Delgado

I hadn't wanted Jerry to be president, but I had long since accepted his decision to run. You plan your life one way, it goes another. When the time came, I felt he would be the best man for the job, and I was willing to take on four more years in the White House.

Well, I think there are people who are getting work that they wouldn't otherwise have. For many of them apparently, it fits in with their lifestyles, so that they can make their own schedules. I think you've got a company that is expanding and delivers, what? A hundred million parcels a year. So somebody's happy with the service, and somebody's happy doing the job.

I wouldn't presume to present a plan different from that of the President. But I believe he was right to take on the war on terror on an aggressive front rather than a defensive front. We toppled the government … walking away would mean a humanitarian disaster. We're there and we have a responsibility to finish the job.

No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.

So the president is like, "Well, once upon a time it was Congress's job to decide whether or not we attacked countries, so let's let them decide." Which is funny, because, as we all know, if Congress were on fire, Congress could not pass the "Pour Water on Congress Act".

I think, like a lot of people on this issue, I have really changed my thinking here to, 'I don't ever want to stand in front of anybody's happiness.' That's not my job, okay? If that word – 'marriage' – is really, really that important to you, I can go with it.

Sometimes you're just happy playing. Some people, some media, unfortunately, don't understand that it's okay just to play tennis and enjoy it. They always think you have to win everything, it always needs to be a success story, and if it's not, obviously, what is the point? Maybe you have to go back and think, Why have I started playing tennis? Because I just like it. It's actually sort of a dream hobby that became somewhat of a job. Some people just don't get that, ever.

Moving forward will not be for the faint of heart. But if the next century witnesses failure, let it be because our science is not yet up to the job, not because we don't have the courage to make less random the sometimes most unfair courses of human evolution.

James Dewey Watson

On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's part of what it takes to get the job done. Deeper down, we know it's all on loan.

Business process engineering aims to achieve the greatest efficiency possible in terms of business-organizational solutions. Organizational departments, reengineering project teams or even business process owners can be responsible for process engineering. While work schedule development for manufacturing processes might be institutionally allocated to a certain department for years as job preparation, other kinds of business processes are not quite as regimented.

August-Wilhelm Scheer

Teaching is a never-ending story. The work is never over; the job is never done.

Andy Hargreaves (academic)

It's our job to first make ourselves feel better and then make ourselves feel good.

D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.

W. Somerset Maugham

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours.

I think I stayed in the Mural division [WPA, early 1940's] until it became A War Service Project and then I was relegated to do a specific job. There was a coordinated move, they had a new president that was being inaugurated for CCNY and they were doing a large – trying to show how higher education was involved in promoting the war effort, with the classes they were teaching, so that I did this work for more than a year before WPA terminated.

I need your help. Royce looked up as if his head weighed a hundred pounds, his eyes red, his face ashen. He waited. One last job, Hadrian told him, then added, I promise. Is it dangerous? Very. Is there a good chance I'll get killed? Odds are definitely in favor of that. Royce nodded, looked down at the scarf in his lap, and replied, Okay.

Michael J. Sullivan (author)

Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing.