[spokeshave]

"No, no, we are amateurs. That's why the trees don't hinder us from seeing the forest. We are not jaded by ego, self aggrandizement or self importance and it is still the love of the game, not the prestige of the position that keeps us in our pajamas making sure the facts correspond with reality, truth. We are amateurs, really."

Not so.

Professional Amateurs all

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

I think the definition below of the word "Amateur" about sums it up for us all.

"Word History: When Mrs. T.W. Atkinson remarked in her 1863 Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants, “I am no amateur of these melons,” she used amateur in a sense unfamiliar to us. That sense, “a lover, an admirer,” is, however, clearly descended from the senses of the word's ultimate Latin source, amtor, “lover, devoted friend, devotee, enthusiastic pursuer of an objective,”

Above from: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Amateur

[blue-duncan]

We were professionals before we were amatuers.