People have asked me, ‚What would you have done if you hadn’t gone into the Army?‘ I’d say I’d probably be a bus driver. I don’t know.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

If Tiger Woods had played football, he would have been a quarterback.

Never get married in college; it’s hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you’ve already made one mistake.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.

This has been my life for many years; one role feeds the other.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

I like to work.

In all my years of baseball, I have always expected to be traded. I never liked the idea.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don’ts of starting a business, I often wonder how different my life and career might have been.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

I was 18 years old, and it was a dream come true for me to work out and eat great food for free. What else do you want in life? People think that is what it is like to be in a SEAL team, but it is less than a fraction of your career as a real SEAL.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

I’ve enjoyed all the parts of my career.

It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

I think that once you’ve had a few No. 1s in your career that you’ve kind of proven yourself, and I don’t feel the need to prove anything anymore.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

My work as an artist is completely separate from my work as a philanthropist.

Jobs are a centuries-old concept created during the Industrial Revolution. Despite the reality that we’re now deep in the Information Age, many people are studying for, or working at, or clinging to the Industrial Age idea of a safe, secure job.

I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

I just don’t believe in the basic concept that someone should make their whole career in public service.

In any profession it gets to be a grind.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

Becoming a writer is not a ‚career decision‘ like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you’re not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

If someone has a really great boyfriend or career, I think, it’s cool that happens.

My other brother-in-law died. He was a karate expert, then joined the army. The first time he saluted, he killed himself.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

Even though I’ve been putting out bodies of work for years, ‚Beauty Behind the Madness‘ felt like the beginning.