Even now it is no longer composed of the traditional political class, but of a composite layer of corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organisations.
You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.
Civil servants are fully aware of the challenges the British economy faces. They are, after all, working tirelessly and professionally to support the coalition government through the current challenges, every day, and in every part of Britain.
Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.
We are not yet at the point where our size, our being the drama industry, is sufficient to support full time professional crews, and that is very very important.
It's almost like, when someone plays poker for the first time, they might be a professional poker player out of ignorance, just accidentally winning. That was how it felt in my first stand-up appearance.
You hire a chief executive, pay him, and hold him accountable after a year or two. The time for so-called honorary jobs is over. What Pakistan squash needs is results, and that can only be achieved by professionals.
Léon: Sorry about your father. Mathilda: If somebody didn't do it one day or another, I probably would have done it myself.
Mathilda: Leon, what exactly do you do for a living? Léon: [Leon] Cleaner. Mathilda: You mean you're a hit man? Léon: [reluctantly] Yeah. Mathilda: Cool.
Stansfield: [after the building explodes] Hey, what the fuck is going on up there? I said take the guy out, not the whole fucking building!
Tony: Hey, Leon, nothing's gonna happen to you. You're indestructible! Bullets slide off you, you play with 'em.
Swat Chief: [speaking to Stansfield through radio] Alpha team, man down, man down. Stansfield: I told you.
Swat Chief: [speaking to Stansfield through radio] Alpha team, final position, ready to go. Stansfield: Be careful.
Pat Sr.: [upon arriving at the hotel and seeing the professional dancers on the night of the competition] Holy shit. Is this Dancing with the Stars?
My father was a waiter basically, and when I got my first professional job as an actor, I left a job that he found me for half the amount of money. So anyone would think that they're stupid, that that would be a stupid move.
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'
This 90/10 rule holds true in almost anything financial. Take the game of golf, for example. Ten percent of the professional golfers make 90 percent of the money.
If Shakespeare thought comedy worthwhile, that means the rest of us can take a break from tragedy now and then without betraying our calling, even if the modern professional intellectual, a poseur by nature, has yet to discover this.
For working with non-professional actors, you have to have this particular desire to work with people who are reluctant to play in a movie. I like this relationship. I'm like a recruiter, an employment agency giving someone employment.
I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.
Harmon Killebrew was a gem. I can never thank him enough for all I learned from him. He was a consummate professional who treated everyone from the brashest of rookies to the groundskeepers to the ushers in the stadium with the utmost of respect.
