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Talent Quotes

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Talent Quotes

“Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyonwith a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.”

“Pianists of extraordinary talent, such as Christina Petrowska,spend a large part of their early lives perfecting technique…Miss Petrowska,a Canadian with a phenomenal ability to play the most difficult music cleanly, gave a demonstration of her achievements at Carnegie Recital Hall. A product of the Juilliard School who studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti in Europe, Miss Petrowska built most of her program around fiercely difficult contemporary works. She has fingers that work like chrome-plated pistons, and her high-seated position let her bring pulverizing power to bear.”

“We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.”

“There are a few investment managers, of course, who are very good - though in the short run, it's difficult to determine whether a great record is due to luck or talent. Most advisors, however, are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns. In truth, their core competence is salesmanship. Rather than listen to their siren songs, investors - large and small - should instead read Jack Bogle's The Little Book of Common Sense Investing.”

“The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling? Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations! Everything on this earth has its difficult sides! Only some inner drive - pleasure, love - can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift as out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!”

“The hedge fund known as "Long Term Capital Management" collapsed last fall through overconfidence in its highly leveraged methods, despite I.Q.'s of its principals that must have averaged 160. Smart people aren't exempt from professional disasters from overconfidence. Often, they just run aground in the more difficult voyages they choose, relying on their self-appraisals that they have superior talents and methods.”

“Give all the credit in the world to Angelique Kerber - great, great talent. She's been in the top 10 for the last four years, and she's one of those players that just really had a difficult time, when the chips were on the table, to kind of bring them over. And this time, she did it. I'm really happy for her because these chances don't come for these other players. Serena Williams has got 21 grand slam champions. Angelique Kerber was in her first final.”

“One of the things I've learned - before I would go on a show, I was like, "Oh God, I hate that show" or "That show is gonna get canceled." But now after being full-time on a show, you see how difficult it is and how much work goes into it and how so many decisions are based on finances or people's schedules or talent or location issues. It's a miracle that anything gets made.”

“My only talent is that I have a so-called big engine. I can attack on successive days - well maybe now not so often - or ride tempo at the front of the peloton for a week. I'm not a climber or a sprinter. Whatever makes the race sticky, fast and difficult is good for me. I'm just a big motor - I think I'm allowed to say that - and a fighter. I'll do whatever it takes to make the race.”