Quotes About Amateur

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.

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

An amateur at LIFE is an amateur at ART.

An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.

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

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells.

I'm an amateur science enthusiast. I'm not even a professional enthusiast. I don't know anything; I never even passed biology in high school. But I read the science section of the newspaper.

I wanted to be the best in the world and at 12 years-old I won my first big amateur contest called The Gold Cup Series Contest at Marina Del Ray Skatepark. That's when I really started to believe I could turn pro, though it wasn't until two years later when I was 14 that I actually did with Sims.

Biologically, man is still the great amateur of the animal kingdom; he is unique in his lack of anatomical and physiological specialization.

The prize money for first place was $2,800, but I didn't take it because I was still an amateur.

When I was a kid, I suppose I got more praise for being able to draw things and paint things than I did for my little amateur poems I was writing. But the thing that I'm trying to do with my painting is that I'm trying to keep it in the realm of pleasure. I don't show my work, I don't try to sell it.

I started boxing when I was eight. Me and my brother Rafael started boxing in amateur tournaments when I was 13. My father was an ex-pro boxer.

I hate to lose and even as an amateur I won every tournament I was in.

Technically perfect, pictorially rotten. (Stieglitz's standard comment on photographs he rejected for publication in The American Amateur Photographer.)

Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and specialise, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The 'expert' is the man who stays put.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre!

All amateur travellers have experienced horror journeys, long or short, sooner or later, one way or another. As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

I would rather instill in my amateur students love, than knowledge, of music. Left with only knowledge, they will at the end close their books and consign the course to forgetfulness. But if they have learned to love but the smallest part of the art, they are likely to pursue some phase of it the rest of their lives.

UFO (Unidentified Flying Object)sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public. In fact, they're lower. You say, why is that so? Well, because we know what the hell we're looking at!

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

Later in July I'm going to be promoting and putting on a boxing show of amateur fighters from July 21st through the 28th where one hundred kids will be fighting and competing with each other to see who's going to be the best.

I was planning to remain an amateur for a while.

A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his job when he does feel like it.

Writers were never meant to be professionals. Writing is not a profession, it is an activity, an essentially amateur occupation. It is what you do when you are not living.

What then is to be the lot of Rossetti's fame and influence? 'An amateur who failed in two arts', it is true; yet it hardly harms Rossetti or touches his standing. On the contrary, it defines both very brilliantly. The small word 'failed' is a small word and little more to artists who are forever going on until they give up over a game that must be lost. Every artist, when confronted by the immensities of art, which is life, must confess to failure. A failure is a thing very relative.