The limits of professionalism

When you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk, or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that, because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure, and if you are professional, your instinct is not to fail—it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

—Milton Glaser