"To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling"
About this Quote
Work, in Walters' telling, isn't just a paycheck or a résumé line; it's the closest thing modern life offers to a public verdict on your worth. The brilliance of her phrasing is the modesty: "even if only once in a while". She doesn't sell mastery as a permanent state. She admits what most high achievers quietly know - competence is intermittent, recognition even more so. That honesty keeps the sentiment from turning into a hustle poster.
The intent is deceptively gentle. Walters is defending ambition without romanticizing it, and she does it by centering a feeling that sounds small but hits big: being valued. "To feel valued" is relational, almost domestic language, slipped into the hard-edged world of professional performance. Then she tightens the screw with "to know...that you can do a job well" - not that you are inherently talented, not that you are destined for greatness, but that you can execute. It's the workaday proof that steadies a person against doubt.
Context matters because Walters made her name in a profession that measures you in public, in real time, often with a gendered edge. Her career unfolded in an era when women's authority on-air was questioned, policed, and routinely diminished. Read that way, the line becomes a quiet rebuttal to dismissal: the marvel isn't fame, it's the hard-won confirmation that you belong in the room. It's also a subtle critique of a culture that withholds that confirmation, turning basic acknowledgment into a rare, almost radiant event.
The intent is deceptively gentle. Walters is defending ambition without romanticizing it, and she does it by centering a feeling that sounds small but hits big: being valued. "To feel valued" is relational, almost domestic language, slipped into the hard-edged world of professional performance. Then she tightens the screw with "to know...that you can do a job well" - not that you are inherently talented, not that you are destined for greatness, but that you can execute. It's the workaday proof that steadies a person against doubt.
Context matters because Walters made her name in a profession that measures you in public, in real time, often with a gendered edge. Her career unfolded in an era when women's authority on-air was questioned, policed, and routinely diminished. Read that way, the line becomes a quiet rebuttal to dismissal: the marvel isn't fame, it's the hard-won confirmation that you belong in the room. It's also a subtle critique of a culture that withholds that confirmation, turning basic acknowledgment into a rare, almost radiant event.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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