Career Disillusionment Quotes

I didn't think I was going to school to be a doctor - no offense, but that wasn't me.

It's the fate of every executive. He gets in on promises and finds that things can't be fulfilled as he hoped.

Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies.

I went to UMass-Amherst and was like, 'I want to work in news, I want to be a journalist.' Then I got there and was like, 'what kind of crap is this?' They inflate everything. It will be like snowing outside, like just a little bit, and they are like 'Giant storm coming, batten down the hatches!' and I just didn't like that aspect of it.

I noticed that almost everyone I went to college with has worked at something other than the subject they majored in. I guess that' s one of the reasons for campus unrest.

My artist career failed pretty miserably multiple times.

Most of my career was negative.

All that young people are promised today are the rewards of a shallow materialism and a degree that is defined primarily as a job credential, one that ironically does not even live up to its own claims of guaranteeing either decent employment or a better way of life.

I, perhaps, at that stage, had the kind of ambition that others may have had; you know, namely based on the concept that if you were trained the world was out there waiting for you to provide a certain kind of leadership and give you an opportunity. But with the Depression, I began to see that there were certain social forces over which the individual had very little control.

That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations - not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting.

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.

I kept thinking, I'm not going to do political journalism, because there's no way to keep my principles and be a political journalist, so I'll edit a popular science magazine. This will be my salvation, and I'll emerge with my integrity intact. That didn't even happen.

You think that after becoming world champion, you're going to be a massive superstar with lots of lucrative bouts against great fighters, but that never materialised for me.

The trip had become boring. It wasn't exciting anymore to totally be a singer/songwriter because it wasn't working for me.

I've had to change careers several times. Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burned beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money. And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.

When I became an actor, it was disappointing to show up on set and be handed a coffee. You know. I'd pick up cables and get told off.

It become totally untenable to me that after acting for 25 years - I've played Juliet, Cleopatra and Anne Frank - there I was, sitting in Hollywood, just waiting for somebody to want me.

This position I've held ... it pays may way and it corrodes my soul.

After I left college I thought, very naively, that either you became someone interesting - an artist - or you went into academia. If you ended up in an office you were dull and lacking. And I ended up in an office.

What a heap of ash most political careers amount to, when one really stops to consider them!

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Stuff that. I'll write a doctoral thesis. Then I can go do what most of the other people with doctoral degrees in anthropology do." "What's that?" asked Calvin. "You don't need to encourage her," said Adam seriously, but his eyes laughed at me. "The same thing that people with degrees in history do," I said. "Fix cars or serve frnech fries and bad hamburgers.

90% of people are in jobs they hate and are bitter about their lives and scratching about for money. That's my worst nightmare.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world.

Working at a job that you hate. Having a career and a life that you have no passion for. That's hell.