Unmerited Success Quotes

Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.

Golf is the Great Mystery. Like some capricous goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock-knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing up snappy seventy-fours.

I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.

Getting a role in 'Harry Potter' was like winning the lottery. But no one deserves an acting job.

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.

I hate for people to think that I have only played for West Ham because I am the local lad and people make allowances for me.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Reality shows have a lot to answer for. They applaud mediocrity.

In Hollywood you just fail upwards.

Since I got an audience before I even had a comic voice, my material that really wasn't worthy of an audience somehow got it, slightly unfairly.

Scientific power is like inherited wealth; attained without discipline. You read about what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast.

I have friends that are super talented, that are far more talented than I am in certain areas, but it just doesn't happen for them. Sometimes you feel guilty for your success because you know people who deserve it way more.

I don't mind that Bill Gates is a mega zillionaire; he's done a lot of really interesting and innovative stuff. I do mind that a lot of unworthy people rode his coattails to minizillionaire status, e.g. the inventor of Hungarian notation, probably the dumbest widely-promulgated idea in the history of the field.

Many attempt to harvest what was never planted.

Such men as fortune raises from a mean estate to the highest elevation by way of a joke.

I know so many amazing actors who don't get work... and then there are a bunch of real duds that work all the time. The industry is just not fair in that way.

I've always been labeled... people think things are handed to me.

I think what drove me insane for a long time is feeling like I hadn't earned most of what I achieved because it came so fast.

Sometimes you're famous before you're good.

Music is the only industry where you don't need to know what you're doing to get ahead. Well, that and politics.

My accomplishments do not live up to my tennis game. Most people have to work really hard and win some big matches, and then they get money and popularity. For me it has been the reverse of everybody else. The exact opposite.

I'd be the biggest hypocrite if I said I really worked very hard for my career, because it was given to me on a silver platter. I can't take any credit.

Getting that debut film is definitely harder than someone who has got a known last name. I mean some star kids don't even audition.

A doctor's son can become a doctor, and no one screams nepotism. I don't understand why, in this industry, people keep saying 'Nepotism, nepotism.'