It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

That’s something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

It’s a small percentage of people who do the 80-hour-a-week high-powered career thing, and they’re almost all men. Why? Well, men are driven by socio-economic status more than women.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

If I had never ventured beyond being a stand-up comic, then I would be sitting in my house today working on my Leonardo DiCaprio impression.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

I did stand-up, weird and ignorant stuff about my career – anything for a laugh.

The problem with being an employee or self-employed is you pay the highest taxes.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

The Federal Reserve has an official commitment to two different policies. One is to prevent inflation from getting too high. The second is to maintain high employment… the European Central Bank has only the first. It has no commitment to keep employment up.

ESPN is a great organization to work for.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

Madonna and I are very different. Just saying. We’re very different. I wouldn’t make that comparison at all, and I don’t mean to disrespect Madonna: she’s a nice lady, and she’s had a fantastic, huge career – biggest pop star of all time.

Even before Snapchat, you go back into my career from Day One or interview people that knew me for 25 years, they’re going to tell you I’ve been DJ Khaled my whole life.

I was always interested – I mean, it’s kind of part of your job – I was always interested in the camera.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

Just because you’ve seen ‚My Cousin Vinny‘ doesn’t qualify you to be a federal judge.

That’s when it becomes a business. When you’ve been public a long time, when it’s a career. You do certain films, you sell them.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

Most young people were getting jobs in big companies, becoming company men. I wanted to be individual.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

When I have been travelling around to speak in different countries, I am always offered help to write about the specific climate policies in specific countries. But that is not really necessary. Because the basic problem is the same everywhere.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

I think that once you’ve had a few No. 1s in your career that you’ve kind of proven yourself, and I don’t feel the need to prove anything anymore.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.

When I was young I felt really overwhelmed and confused by the desire not to end up in an office, doing something I didn’t believe in.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

I’m touring the world, not doing nothing against the law, getting money to feed my family. I got employees that have felonies, and they can’t get jobs. They work for me.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

People have asked me, ‚What would you have done if you hadn’t gone into the Army?‘ I’d say I’d probably be a bus driver. I don’t know.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

Work is making a living out of being bored.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.