"When you've moved past a point where you're just scrambling for jobs, you think about the things that you want to do. And the things that you want to do are governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace"
About this Quote
Danny Glover frames ambition as something that only becomes legible once survival stops eating the whole page. The first clause, "scrambling for jobs", is deliberately unglamorous: not the myth of the hungry artist, but the gig-to-gig anxiety that keeps you reactive, grateful, and quiet. He’s describing a threshold moment in a creative life when choices stop being dictated by rent and start being dictated by appetite and ethics. That shift matters because it’s where agency begins - and where responsibility sneaks in with it.
The quote’s subtext is a critique of the way economic precarity narrows imagination. When you’re hustling, "what you want" is often just "what you can get". Glover implies that desire isn’t pure; it’s shaped. Once you have room to breathe, you start asking what kind of work you want to stand behind, what stories you want to amplify, what compromises you’re done making. It’s not a self-help mantra so much as a map of how careers become values.
Then he pivots: "governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace". That’s where Glover’s public life peeks through. As an actor known for roles that cross entertainment and social commentary, and as a longtime activist, he’s arguing that exposure creates obligation. Experience offers the raw material, but "choose" signals accountability: your politics, your art, your next project are decisions, not destiny. He’s quietly rejecting the alibi of neutrality. Once you’ve seen enough, you’re responsible for what you do with it.
The quote’s subtext is a critique of the way economic precarity narrows imagination. When you’re hustling, "what you want" is often just "what you can get". Glover implies that desire isn’t pure; it’s shaped. Once you have room to breathe, you start asking what kind of work you want to stand behind, what stories you want to amplify, what compromises you’re done making. It’s not a self-help mantra so much as a map of how careers become values.
Then he pivots: "governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace". That’s where Glover’s public life peeks through. As an actor known for roles that cross entertainment and social commentary, and as a longtime activist, he’s arguing that exposure creates obligation. Experience offers the raw material, but "choose" signals accountability: your politics, your art, your next project are decisions, not destiny. He’s quietly rejecting the alibi of neutrality. Once you’ve seen enough, you’re responsible for what you do with it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
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