Mose Allison Quotes

Some guys have all this talent, and you wonder why they can't put it all together. Well, they don't do any of the little things.

Working hard is great, being lazy sometimes is great, but failed potential is the worst.

The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.

In pop music, the public usually see the results - the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours - but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won't make it.

The men who miss success have two general alibis: 'I'm not a genius' is one; the other, 'There aren't the opportunities today there used to be.' Neither excuse holds. The first is beside the point; the second is altogether wrong.

When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

If you got what it takes, you'll make it. If you don't, Shakespeare couldn't help you.

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

Talent doesn't always equal success.

There are plenty of smart people who get nowhere.

Your hard work and talent will not pay off.

There are hundreds of players who are trying to be a Beckham or Cantona but do not have the personality, and they fail.

Talented people without discipline don't go anywhere.

Most people with a big idea, great talent and/or something to say don't get lucky at first. Or second. Or even third. It's so easy to conclude that if you're not lucky, you're not good. So persistence becomes an essential element of good, because without persistence, you never get a chance to get lucky.

If we start without confidence, we have already lost half the battle and we bury our talents.

Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.

The worst nightmare would be not to achieve what I know I'm capable of.

Nobody has enough talent to live on talent alone. Even when you have talent, a life without work goes nowhere.

Like I said about Seinfeld and Chris Rock, they're a great combination of brilliance and hard work. [But] there are people who are brilliant and don't work hard, and there are people who are brilliant and sabotage themselves.

You see people - maybe in a frustrating fashion - that don't get embraced, when they should. You get some people who get embraced too early, and they tend to flame out, but it's really rare that someone gets lucky. It's usually a combination of a lot of talent and a lot of hard work.

There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

I believe in talent. I know you're not supposed to believe in that anymore because you're supposed to believe if you just work hard you can do anything. That's how you succeed, maybe. But talent is something you're born with. You cannot acquire it by working hard, and you cannot lose it by lying around either.

Sometimes when you do things right, there's no results.

If you can keep on trying after three failures in a given undertaking you may consider yourself a 'suspect' as a potential leader in your chosen occupation. If you can keep on trying after a dozen failures the seed of a genius is germinating within your soul.