Quotes About Talent

There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.

If you look at what Ben Affleck has gone on to do, as an actor and as a director, it's extraordinary. But if you look back at his career, I don't think it's surprising. From Good Will Hunting on down, the guy is a monster talent, and I think talent wins out, in the end. There's always the ebb and flow of any career, but I think talent wins out, in the end.

In the contest between talent and hard work as to which is the more important element of success, there's no comparison. A mediocre talent with lots of hard work will go further than a stellar talent who coasts.

Obviously you have to have talent in order to play so you can't overlook that, but we won't overlook the character issue when it comes to talent because if they have talent and they don't have character, it's going to be very difficult to coach that person.

To me, paintings are about beauty. They are very feminine, and beauty is something very feminine. For a long time, people would talk with me about identity. I don't have issues with identity, I just follow this kind of feminine beauty because I became a victim of my art, which I think is the best thing for an artist. So many artists use their talent, but with the best artists, their talent uses them.

There's a lot of talent in South Central L.A., in Compton and Long Beach and Watts, and the city north of Pico pretty much sits back and waits for that talent to emerge and then steps in.

Every person is born with a talent, and happiness depends on discovering that talent in time.

Pleasant things to hear, though hearing them from him embarrasses me. I soak up the praise but feel obliged to disparage the gift. I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something--forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something.

The general unreliability of all information presents a special problem in war: all action takes place, so to speak, in the twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. Whatever is hidden from full view in this feeble light has to be guessed at by talent, or simply left to chance. So once again for the lack of objective knowledge, one has to trust to talent or to luck.

There may be talent without position, but there is no position without some kind of talent.

I started painting as a hobby when I was little. I didn't know I had any talent. I believe talent is just a pursued interest. Anybody can do what I do.

Too many people have refused to begin running or have quickly dropped out of running programs because they 'have no talent for it.' Ridiculous. Talent has nothing to do with it. The only thing that matters is mental discipline.

Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

The difference between Talent and Genius is that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard.

The difference between talent and genius is in the direction of the current: in genius, it is from within outward; in talent from without inward.

I do not think I'm a great talent. I think I'm a medium talent, but I think I understand the business and enjoy the business.

A big talent steals, a small talent borrows.

The idea of a star being born is bushwa. A star is created, carefully and cold-bloodily, built up from nothing, from nobody. Age, beauty, talent, least of all talent, has nothing to do with it. We could make silk purses out of sows' ears every day of the week.

As I was growing up, I did a lot of talent shows. I won fifteen Sunday nights straight in a series of talent shows in Macon. I showed up the sixteenth night, and they wouldn't let me go on any more. Whatever success I had was through the help of the good Lord.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.

I think that some people have wonderful spots. I think that Karl Lagerfeld has a wonderful spot designing for Chanel. They really just let him go. I think John Galliano is a huge talent. Marc Jacobs is also a huge talent - and a very interesting one to me.

It's not that we don't have talent in our country; the talent is, in fact, not required today.

Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become 'stage-worthy.' We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking and crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations. If the environment permits it, anyone can learn whatever he chooses to learn; and if the individual permits it, the environment will teach him everything it has to teach. 'Talent' or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it.

Generally speaking, there is more wit than talent in the world. Society swarms with witty people who lack talent.

I used to rap as a kid and people were impressed by it, so it gave me the drive to keep going. Everybody has at least one talent. I guess this is my talent.

God gives talent. Work transforms talent into genius.

Talent, don't bother about wether or not you have it. Just assume that you do, and forget about it. Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished.

I wouldn't call myself an actor or a singer for that matter, just a journeyman. [...] I feel I must have a talent somewhere for doing something but I'm still not terribly sure what it is. I suppose it's a talent for being myself.

The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.

Effort without talent is a depressing situation... but talent without effort is a tragedy.

If you don't want to join a union, you're gonna have much more opportunity for individual expansion, individual expression of talent and achievement. But when you go to work at a place where salaries are predetermined not by your productivity and not by your talent and not by how much you work, but rather by what the union contract is, you're locked into that no matter how good a job you do. The only option you have is overtime to make more than what standard pay is.

Talent without genius isn't much, but genius without talent is nothing whatsoever.

I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.

Talent is truth on display.

There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren't willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

It is a profound mistake to imagine mistake to imagine that the art of combination depends only on natural talent, and that it cannot be learned. Every player knows that all (or almost all) combinations arise from a recollection of familiar elements.

Jackie had a keen eye for talent, and like an elephant never forgot. And, he was always right on the mark.

Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.

It's very hard to become an actor in film and television, you have to have such perseverance and you have to really believe that if you have any sort of talent at all, you will find work one day.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

The influence that Oakland has on my sound is about 90%. There's so many different elements to Oakland. Of course you have the street elements, but then you also have the culture and there's so much culture around. It's a competitive city, it's full of just great artists and talent. It gave me the confidence, the passion, the realness I try my hardest to portray, so it has had about 90% influence on me.

I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream...he realizes that he's gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

Hemingway's talent was so outsized, that I feel like I can forgive him a lot of his trespasses to have achieved what he did achieve.

I always tell girls who say they want to start a band but don't have any talent, well, neither do I. I mean, I can carry a tune, but anyone who picks up a bass can figure it out. You don't have to have magic unicorn powers. You work at it, and you get better. It's like anything- You sit there and do it every day, and eventually you get good at it.

It's the most extraordinary and saddest thing, the amount of talent out there not being seen.

I think people of lesser talent will become stars.

I believe that God felt sorry for actors so he created Hollywood to give them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent.