Definition of Amateur

Amateur

A person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science as to music or painting; esp. one who cultivates any study or art, from taste or attachment, without pursuing it professionally.

Related Definitions:

Any, Art, As, Attached, Attachment, From, It, Music, One, Or, Painting, Particular, Person, Professionally, Pursuing, Pursuit, Science, Study, Taste, To, Who, Without

Amateur Quotations

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.
Will Rogers

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
Richard Bach

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.
Woodrow Wilson

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.
James Whistler

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.
Lytton Strachey

There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
Ethel Waters

I'm not going to talk like I know about politics, because I'm a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren't normally interested in politics.
Bjork

By the time I was 22, I was a professional. A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur.
Stephen Sondheim

Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.
Donald Rumsfeld

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.
Alvin Toffler

So I have the classic amateur's technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes.
Bill Bruford

I've returned to being an amateur without any ties or strings attached, which gives me a freedom I never had before.
Cat Stevens

Before the start of the '76 Olympics, I'd had 160 amateur fights. I won 155 and lost five.
Sugar Ray Leonard

I am essentially an amateur medecin, and this to me is almost a mania.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
Alan Greenspan

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.
David McCullough

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.
Anne Tyler

We were watching the first series recently, and it has a charm, a kind of amateur charm. At that point we didn't involve ourselves technically at all - we just messed about and told our jokes - and it looks a bit like that.
Jennifer Saunders

I was planning to remain an amateur for a while.
Tracy Austin

If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
Red Adair

My amateur interest in astronomy brought out the term 'magnitude,' which is used for the brightness of a star.
Charles Francis Richter

So as an amateur Olympic competitor I loved criticism, because it made me better. But now as a professional I don't really know how to channel it or where to take it, so I don't take it quite as well.
Scott Hamilton

I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word.
John Sexton

We did exactly what everybody in the country did, watching it. You entered this state of sort of denials. You think, well, it must have been a tragic accident by an amateur pilot. And then you see the next plane coming.
Diane Sawyer

I was 20, I was an amateur from 14 but my first professional role was at 22.
Richard Briers

Later in July I'm going to be promoting and putting on a boxing show of amateur fighters from July 21st through the 28th where one hundred kids will be fighting and competing with each other to see who's going to be the best.
Alexis Arguello

American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.
Bob Schieffer

I began playing in the senior circuit when I was 15 and won the world senior amateur title the same year.
Jahangir Khan

At this period the enthusiasm of the amateur was fast giving way to a more steady commercial instinct, and I let no opportunity slip of improving my position, but I felt that I was still labouring under the disadvantage of not having acquired some technical profession.
Henry Bessemer

More Amateur Quotations

Amateur Translations

amateur in Afrikaans is amateur
amateur in Dutch is knutseaar, amateur, dilettant
amateur in French is amateur
amateur in German is Amateur {m}, Amateur {m}, Nichtprofi {m}
amateur in Italian is dilettante, amante
amateur in Portuguese is amador
amateur in Spanish is amante, aficionado

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