“It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.”
Speech at the Innauguration of the Aga Khan Baug, Versova, India (17 January 1983) http://ismaili.net/speech/s830117.html <!-- ***Source: Selection of Speeches: 1976-1984
Source: Africa Ismaili, XIV, 2 (July 1983), pp. 20-22
Source: American Ismaili, (July 11, 1983), pp. 15-16 -->
Context: There are those... who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.
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Aga Khan IV 26
49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism 1936Related quotes
“No man's more fortunate than he who's poor,
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Context: The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse.

More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian (1856), p. 207

“It is the fortunate who should extol fortune.”
Though attributed to Tasso this is in fact from Goethe's Torquato Tasso, Act II, scene iii, line 115. In the original German: Das Glück erhebe billig der Beglückte!
Misattributed
“Leave the fireworks for those who cast no spark of their own.”
Source: Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”
"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293
Source: Ends and Means