Duncan Jones Quotes

I didn't want to have people open doors for me. My dad never made a call on my behalf to anyone - not to a producer, a director, or a casting agent.

I am sure it does not hurt that Mitt Romney is my dad. I'm sure it's opened a lot of doors for me. But I think I've been pretty effective once I've gotten through the door at doing a pretty good job.

I am criticized for getting jobs because of my name, but I only use it when I have to.

The world doesn't reward talent, it mostly rewards those who are connected.

I never wanted anyone to think that I would use my family name to get me anywhere.

The self-made man that some people believe is a myth? It could be, because you do it on the backs of other people.

Most of us pay some sort of price for screwing up. Quayle never has. His high school guidance counselor told him his grades were too low for admission to DePauw University, where his grandfather was a trustee and major donor, but he got in anyway. In college he flunked the departmental exam that was supposed to be a prerequisite to graduation, but he graduated anyway. Although it was 1969, the height of the Vietnam War, a year when more than a quarter million young men were drafted and other Indianans were being told it would take years to get into the National Guard, Quayle landed a spot in a week flat, after a retired Guard general who worked for his family made a call on his behalf. Quayle was rejected by Indiana University Law School, but he got in anyway- under an affirmative action program, after he visited the dean of admissions, a Republican judge in a city (Indianapolis) where Quayle’s grandfather owned the newspaper. (Soon thereafter, the grandfather made a large contribution to the law school.) Quayle was indifferent law student, but he got a job in the state attorney general’s office anyway. (His father made a few calls.) He was a twenty-nine year old employee of his father’s paper, but he got elected to Congress anyway, with the help of the paper and his own good looks. He was a poor congressman, but he got elected to Senate anyway, in the 1980 Reagan landslide. Two years later the DePauw faculty voted against giving him an honorary degree, but he got it anyway. He was a mediocre senator, but Bush put him on the national ticket anyway. He blew the debate, but he’ll probably be elected vice president anyway. At this rate he’ll be president by cherry blossom time.

Ask Frank Stallone how far your name gets you.

I'm not going to deny that knowing someone in high places can sometimes get the job done. That's the name of the game. A son or daughter of someone famous will get a break. But once they're in there, they're on their own.

I have never lived off my family name.

Well, I don't believe in patronage.

It’s the downside of a family business: anything good is because I’m somebody’s son; otherwise, I’m a schmuck.

Hard work. Well, that=s all right for people who don=t know how to do anything else. It=s all right for people who aren=t lucky. But once you==re lucky, you don=t have to work for other people. You make them work for you.

In life it wasn't what you know, but who you know. I had people who were trying to buy teams and had they bought the teams, I would have gotten to coach because they wanted me to coach. But the people who have the teams hire their friends.

I am not a father who wants to give his kids everything. They have to earn it.

Some people just get what they want in the world.

Too often, people get jobs based on who they know - not what they know.

Affirmative action takes many forms in our society. White fraternity members help others with jobs.

To enjoy a prince's favor does not rule out the possibility of merit, but neither does it argue for its existence.

The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son - it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.

Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don't mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.

It is not a shocker to me that a film went out of my hands, not because I was not credible, but because I was not so-and-so's daughter or sister or dating so-and-so.

Being Prince's sister might get me in the door, but it is my own talent that keeps me on the stage.

Since the age of 12, I was on my own. Everything I do, I get my parents' support.