Amateurs Quotes

“A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning

“You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?”
― Moira J. Moore, Heroes at Odds

“The biggest criminals that I have met in life are working for the government. They make mass murderers look like amateurs.”
― Steven Magee

“Self-publishing a shitty book doesn't make you an author any more than singing in the shower makes you a rockstar or squeezing your pimple makes you a dermatologist.”
― Oliver Markus

“True artists unburden their envies and work toward encouraging amateurs.”
― Aniruddha Sastikar

“Experts were once amateurs who kept practicing.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“It was the end of the era of the amateur, a time when everyone had to be a bit of everything. You helped your neighbors build their homes, fight their fires, raise and butcher and preserve their own food. You knew how to repair a weapon, pull a tooth, hammer a horseshoe, and deliver a child. But industrialization fostered specialization—and it was fantastic. Trained pros were better than self-taught amateurs, and their expertise allowed them to demand and develop better tools for their crafts—tools that only they knew how to operate. Over time, a subtle cancer spread: where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals did all the fighting and fixing we used to handle ourselves; they even took over our fun, playing our sports while we sat back and watched.”
― Christopher McDougall, Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance

“Nobody was born a master; amateurs become experts because they did not give up on learning. You are going as far as you can if you’ll learn and apply!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365

“Those who earn their living by puppetry must satisfy the public demand, and so are to a large extent compelled to be conservative. As so often in other branches of the performing arts, it is only the amateur who can safely afford to experiment, to explore new forms and techniques, and to run the risk of failure.”
― Peter D. Arnott, Plays WIthout People: Puppetry and Serious Drama

“Some of the most corrupt people that you will meet in life are working in corporate government law enforcement. They make criminals look like amateurs.”
― Steven Magee

“the anxiety of the unpredictable came only when you dealt with amateurs”
― David Morrell, The Fraternity of the Stone

“When a student asked Linus Pauling how he got a good idea, the double Nobel Prize winner answered: 'You have a lot of ideas and you throw away the bad ones.' Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, said that 'theorists in biology should realize that it is ... unlikely that they will produce a good theory at their first attempt. It is amateurs who have one big bright idea beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot.”
― Robert Aunger, The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think

“It is only in marriage that amateurs enjoy the most and not the geeks”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“Philosophers have questions. Scientists have theories.

Entrepreneurs have projects. Artists have obsessions.

And amateurs have ideas.”
― Vizi Andrei, The Sovereign Artist: Meditations on Lifestyle Design