Career Ladder Quotes

When I was at the 'Philadelphia Inquirer,' I was promoted nine times in my first 13 years. I ultimately went from general assignment to beats on St. Joe's and Temple, to backup writer, to NBA writer, to NBA columnist, to, ultimately, in 2003, to general sports columns.

Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.

You can't be a professor without having been a student. You can't be a consultant without having been a research associate. So, if you outsource the least sophisticated jobs, at some stage, the next step of the ladder has to follow.

Glenda Bailey is a woman after my own heart who believes that climbing the career ladder can be overrated, to say the least. After all, why not just go for what you want now?

In 'The Travelers,' everyone is defined by his or her relationship to work. I put each character on a different rung of the ladder: from the lowliest assistant to a powerful man in the world of media.

In my head, that climb up the career ladder just doesn't exist. I feel I've achieved everything I set out to achieve, as far as work goes.

In all American professional sports you start on a certain level and you have to work your way up through a farm system. It's really the same in acting.

Let me make something clear: There are very few things Hollywood is right about. This is a very corrupt, elitist industry that breeds favoritism and fails people up the career ladder.

I don't believe in that kind of pragmatic career ladder stuff.

The never-ending competition between writers hasn't changed between 1868 and 2000. I used to belong to writers' workshops with other professionals, but that becomes impossible after a while. Everyone's on a different step of the career ladder. Jealousy doesn't have to erupt into murder and burying someone in Wells Cathedral, but it is always there.

Every woman who has a business book has a platform. For the most part, they're either a television personality or someone who had the perfect pedigree and worked their way up the career ladder.

In this business, you're either Brad Pitt right away, or you're already going down the ladder.

There's not a lot I haven't done, from being the No. 1 option to the No. 12 option.

In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can't do anyplace else.

As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year.