Top 604 Amateur Quotes & Sayings

I've been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you. An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.

Artistic self-indulgence is the mark of an amateur. The temptation to make scenes, to appear late, to call in sick, not to meet deadlines, not to be organized, is at heart a sign of your own insecurity and at worst the sign of an amateur.

Thanks to a hacker known as Guccifer who wormed into the computer of the 43rd president's sister, the world has learned that George W. Bush is an amateur - I would say serious amateur - painter.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

In Holland you go into amateur teams, come up through the ranks and are generally spotted for senior or professional football. At 16, I had made it into a men's amateur team, and was picked up professionally from there.

The amateur has a long list of fears. Near the top are two: Solitude and silence. The amateur fears solitude and silence because she needs to avoid, at all costs, the voice inside her head that would point her toward her calling and her destiny. So she seeks distraction. The amateur prizes shallowness and shuns depth. The culture of Twitter and Facebook is paradise for the amateur.

I ... began my career as a wireless amateur. After 43 years in radio, I do not mind confessing that I am still an amateur. Despite many great achievements in the science of radio and electronics, what we know today is far less than what we have still to learn.

My mother was an amateur singer, my father was an amateur drunk.

I never was an amateur wrestler.

I like amateur things.

After I won my first amateur fight, I figured I would do fighting on the side while I was going to school. I got an offer after that amateur fight to take a professional fight. The opponent kind of wanted to have an easy win for her pro debt, and they said they'd pay me $1,500. I was like, 'Yeah, might as well get paid for what I was doing.'

I had 45 amateur fights, and I was able to win two national titles in those three years as an amateur.

I have been blowing past the majority of my opponents, so people get the impression of me as an attacking, body punching, and brawler type. I do like to put the pressure on, but I have very underrated boxing skills. I have won nine amateur titles. I had 80 amateur fights, and won 76 if them. You do not get that kind of record without having talent. The good thing is I have not really needed all my talent yet. When I get an opportunity to show that talent, people will start taking me more seriously.

I was planning to remain an amateur for a while.

Ill always be an amateur photographer.

Usually the amateur is defined as an immature state of the artist: someone who cannot — or will not — achieve the mastery of a profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional: for it is he who stands closer to the (i)noeme(i) of Photography.

I'm an amateur.

I came from amateur football.

My mum and dad's hobby was amateur dramatics.

An amateur at LIFE is an amateur at ART.

Once you're an amateur wrestler, you're always an amateur wrestler.

I would say I am an amateur guitarist.

The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.

I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.

I think of myself as an amateur filmmaker, not a professional, in the sense that "amateur" means love of something, for the form.

It's turned into a world of amateurs. There are amateur actors making millions of dollars, amateur cinematographers, amateur directors... Jesus, these amateur directors can get deals for anything. Another comic book? Oh, very good.

You spend your life having lessons, practising and competing as an amateur, and working during the day. As you get to the top end of the amateur field, you try not to work anymore; you earn your living through dancing, maybe by doing a bit of teaching. It's an ongoing life's work.

Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.

I'd like to see 'Top Chef: Amateur'. Sometimes we have an amateur chef on the show and they just can't cut it against the pros but there are some great stories there.

I've been an amateur photographer since my teens.

I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word.

I'm an amateur at music and an amateur at most things. I like the idea of offering some music and some records and a website to people who feel perplexed.

The difference between and amateur and a professional.. a professional believes if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. An amateur believes if a job is worth doing, it very well may be worth doing badly.

I played high school golf, I played amateur golf and I started getting officers. I was playing pretty good, won amateur tournaments as a junior, and the whole thing.

I relate everything to amateur wrestling, including the way I watch basketball and the way I watch football. My brain thinks as an amateur wrestler. That's who I am.

Amateur boxing is one of the safest sports around.

Every honest researcher I know admits he's just a professional amateur. He's doing whatever he's doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he's going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.

There will be this mix of people like me who write for major national newspapers and amateur critics, practitioner critics, whose primary way of distributing what they talk about is through blogs and on the web. The line between professional and amateur criticism will become increasingly blurred. The problem here is that if you want to do this for a living, you have to be able to earn a living doing it.

I started at the Incognito Theatre as an amateur.

A great champion needs a background in amateur boxing, I?'m convinced of that. There you learn everything that you?ll need later as a pro. Someone who?s got more than 400 amateur fights behind him no longer gets nervous before going into the ring and doesn?t lose his nerve during a fight. You know all the boxing styles, you?re prepared for anything, you?ve got the pedigree that you need to be a successful pro.

Every professional was once an amateur.

Hit and move, that's amateur boxing and that's what I'm good at.

I'm a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor.

I lost an amateur fight where it was supposed to be my last amateur fight before going pro and people were like, 'Oh, you think you're going to make this? You just got knocked out as an amateur?' And I went on to win 13 fights straight and become a world champion, the best in the world.

We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.

There should be a dash of the amateur in criticism. For the amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is not habit bound.

I still consider myself to be an amateur filmmaker. And I say that because in the Latin origin of the word amateur is the word love, and it's love of a form, whereas professional implies something you do for money or for work.

I'll always be an amateur photographer.

Every artist was first an amateur.

I would hate to think I am not an amature. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

The difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the amateur thinks the camera does the work. And they treat the camera with a certain amount of reverence. It is all about the kind of lens you choose, the kind of film stock you use… exactly the sort of perfection of the camera. Whereas, the professional the real professional – treats the camera with unutterable disdain. They pick up the camera and sling it aside. Because they know it’s the eye and the brain that count, not the mechanism that gets between them and the subject that counts.

As an amateur, you may envy the professional, wishing you could combine business with pleasure into a kind of full-time hobby, using professional equipment and facilities. However, the professional knows that much of the hidden advantage of being amateur is the freedom you have to shoot what and when you like.

I think that's my strength, that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've done it all my life but at heart, I'm just a passionate amateur gardener.

I'm an amateur, so I read what's interesting to me.

I was an amateur - I am an amateur - and I intend to stay an amateur. To me an amateur photographer is one who is in love with taking pictures, a free soul who can photograph what he likes and who likes what he photographs.

There's a great thing about amateur sport: it is purer. And the athletes are not open to so much pressure with amateur sport.

The amateur tweets. The pro works.

I'm very, very amateur, which is funny because I'm not in the amateur leagues.

I'm a real amateur enthusiast for science.