Jack Nicholson Quotes

All great careers are carved out by the sword.

Getting to the top is not so easy; staying there is more difficult.

Naturally enough when I was a young dancer, I was terribly anxious to get ahead, and to get ahead quickly. I was impatient with all those older people who talked of the long grind to the top, who turned me down for jobs I knew I could do.

I know what it takes to get to the top.

You'll sacrifice a lot of things in the early part of your career to be successful, but to be ahead of your competitors, you have to work hard.

You still really fight for good parts. It never stops. It's never a breeze. The people at the top of their game work as hard as the people at the bottom.

At the beginning of my career, it was very hard to go up. Now, it's very hard to stay on top. You have to stay there, and I want to stay there so badly. I'm still standing.

I've carried my chip with me my entire career. I've had to fight and claw for every position I've had. I sat on the bench as a junior in high school, I had to compete my senior year in high school to get the job. I competed again at Vanderbilt before having success.

I work really hard and have rolled up my sleeves for a long time to get the opportunities I've had.

You work all your life to get the top; you don't want to give that up.

If I'm just trying to get to different levels... and it takes levels to get to levels, and I just have to do what I have to do to keep on climbing the charts and getting where I need to be.

I have to work my way up. There's nothing guaranteed in this league.

I'm not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I'm still battling it out in the trenches.

Remember there is plenty of room at the top-but not enough to sit down.

Ambition is important. Of course you can't get anywhere without talent, but there are a lot of talented people. To succeed, you have to be the most ambitious talented person.

No great achiever - even those who made it seem easy - ever succeeded without hard work.

The amount of work and the amount of both physical and emotional investment it takes to get to the top.

No one succeeds without effort... Those who succeed owe their success to perseverance.

In this life, to earn your place you have to fight for it.

I want to be the best, so whatever comes with that, I'll have to accept.

I'm very aware that to reach the same level and have the same amount of success will be extremely difficult.

The best roles you have to fight for. You have to really want to do it and you have to go after it.

I'd rather play in the major leagues and have some bad games than play consistently good ball in the minors.

Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.

There are actors who spend 20 years working and still don't achieve what I've achieved so quickly. So I think my only course of action is to work as hard as I can, not just for the sake of the film, but also to prove to these people that I do have talent.