Quotes about opportunity
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George W. Bush photo

“As you watch the developments in Baghdad, it's important to understand that we will not be able to prevent every al Qaeda attack. When a terrorist is willing to kill himself to kill others, it's really hard to stop him. Yet, over time, the security operation in Baghdad is designed to shrink the areas where al Qaeda can operate, it's designed to bring out more intelligence about their presence, and designed to allow American and Iraqi forces to dismantle their network.We have a strategy to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq. But any time you say to a bunch of cold-blooded killers, success depends on no violence, all that does is hand them the opportunity to be successful. And it's hard. I know it's hard for the American people to turn on their TV screens and see the horrific violence. It speaks volumes about the American desire to protect lives of innocent people, America's deep concern about human rights and human dignity. It also speaks volumes about al Qaeda, that they're willing to take innocent life to achieve political objectives.The terrorists will continue to fight back. In other words, they understand what they're doing. And casualties are likely to stay high. Yet, day by day, block by block, we are steadfast in helping Iraqi leaders counter the terrorists, protect their people, and reclaim the capital. And if I didn't think it was necessary for the security of the country, I wouldn't put our kids in harm's way.…Either we'll succeed, or we won't succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that's what we're trying to achieve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070502-2.html (May 2, 2007)
2000s, 2007

Marshall Goldsmith photo

“People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats.”

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) American author of leadership and management literature

Marshall Goldsmith, ‎Daniel Farb, ‎Bruce Gordon (2005), Secrets of a Leadership Coach Guidebook. p. 25

Jane Wagner photo

“Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

Mike Rosen photo

“Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity. Liberals believe in equality of outcome.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

Rocky Mountain News column, 2000

H. G. Wells photo
Taylor Caldwell photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo
Louis Brandeis photo
Mel Gibson photo
Mukesh Ambani photo

“One of my biggest obsessions today is that senior people must give bright 25-year olds the opportunity to contribute meaningfully.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Always invest in businesses of the future and in talent

Harry Truman photo
Jermain Defoe photo
Nelson Mandela photo
Michael Johns photo
Roy Blunt photo
Jay Samit photo

“Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 49

Leighton W. Smith, Jr. photo
Dick Cheney photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This increase in the life span and in the number of our senior citizens presents this Nation with increased opportunities: the opportunity to draw upon their skill and sagacity — and the opportunity to provide the respect and recognition they have earned. It is not enough for a great nation merely to have added new years to life — our objective must also be to add new life to those years.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Special message to the Congress on the needs of the nation’s senior citizens (21 February 1963); in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 189
1963

Dawn Butler photo
John D. Carmack photo
Bill Gates photo
Luke Haines photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“I have read your speech and I must frankly say, with much regret as there is little in it that I can agree with, and much from which I differ. You lay down broadly the Doctrine of Universal Suffrage which I can never accept. I intirely deny that every sane and not disqualified man has a moral right to a vote—I use that Expression instead of “the Pale of the Constitution”, because I hold that all who enjoy the Security and civil Rights which the Constitution provides are within its Pale—What every Man and Woman too have a Right to, is to be well governed and under just Laws, and they who propose a change ought to shew that the present organization does not accomplish those objects…[Your speech] was more like the Sort of Speech with which Bright would have introduced the Reform Bill which he would like to propose than the Sort of Speech which might have been expected from the Treasury bench in the present State of Things. Your Speech may win Lancashire for you, though that is doubtful but I fear it will tend to lose England for you. It is to be regretted that you should, as you stated, have taken the opportunity of your receiving a Deputation of working men, to exhort them to set on Foot an Agitation for Parliamentary Reform—The Function of a Government is to calm rather than to excite Agitation.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to William Ewart Gladstone (12 May 1864), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 281-282.
1860s

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston photo

“I believe that the Durbar, more than any event in modern history, showed to the Indian people the path which, under the guidance of Providence, they are treading, taught the Indian Empire its unity, and impressed the world with its moral as well as material force. It will not be forgotten. The sound of the trumpets has already died away; the captains and the kings have departed; but the effect produced by this overwhelmingly display of unity and patriotism is still alive and will not perish. Everywhere it is known that upon the throne of the East is seated a power that has made of the sentiments, the aspirations, and the interests of 300 millions of Asiatics a living thing, and the units in that great aggregation have learned that in their incorporation lies their strength. As a disinterested spectator of the Durbar remarked, Not until to-day did I realise that the destinies of the East still lie, as they always have done, in the hollow of India’s hand. I think, too, that the Durbar taught the lesson not only of power but of duty. There was not an officer of Government there present, there was not a Ruling Prince nor a thoughtful spectator, who must not at one moment or other have felt that participation in so great a conception carried with it responsibility as well as pride, and that he owed something in return for whatever of dignity or security or opportunity the Empire had given him.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Budget Speech (25 March 1903), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 308-309.

George W. Bush photo
Winnifred Harper Cooley photo

“The finest achievement of the new woman has been personal liberty. This is the foundation of civilization; and as long as any one class is watched suspiciously, even fondly guarded, and protected, so long will that class not only be weak, and treacherous, individually, but parasitic, and a collective danger to the community. Who has not heard wives commended for wheedling their husbands out of money, or joked [about] because they are hopelessly extravagant? As long as caprice and scheming are considered feminine virtues, as long as man is the only wage-earner, doling out sums of money, or scattering lavishly, so long will women be degraded, even if they are perfectly contented, and men are willing to labor to keep them in idleness!

Although individual women from pre-historic times have accomplished much, as a class they have been set aside to minister to men's comfort. But when once the higher has been tried, civilization repudiates the lower. Men have come to see that no advance can be made with one half-humanity set apart merely for the functions of sex; that children are quite liable to inherit from the mother, and should have opportunities to inherit the accumulated ability and culture and character that is produced only by intellectual and civil activity. The world has tried to move with men for dynamos, and "clinging" women impeding every step of progress, in arts, science, industry, professions, they have been a thousand years behind men because forced into seclusion. They have been over-sexed. They have naturally not been impressed with their duties to society, in its myriad needs, or with their own value as individuals.

The new woman, in the sense of the best woman, the flower of all the womanhood of past ages, has come to stay — if civilization is to endure. The sufferings of the past have but strengthened her, maternity has deepened her, education is broadening her — and she now knows that she must perfect herself if she would perfect the race, and leave her imprint upon immortality, through her offspring or her works.”

Winnifred Harper Cooley (1874–1967) American author and lecturer

The New Womanhood (New York, 1904) 31f.

Allen C. Guelzo photo
Mitt Romney photo

“I see an America where poverty is defeated by opportunity, not enabled by a government check.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-03-20
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/20/mitt_romneys_illinois_victory_speech_113565.html
Mitt Romney's Illinois Victory Speech
RealClearPolitics
2012

Aldous Huxley photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“The Olympics are an opportunity to redefine the country, but the message is always wrong.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Happiness Can’t Be Faked, 2008

Bernard Lewis photo

“Of all these offenses the one that is most widely, frequently, and vehemently denounced is undoubtedly imperialism—sometimes just Western, sometimes Eastern (that is, Soviet) and Western alike. But the way this term is used in the literature of Islamic fundamentalists often suggests that it may not carry quite the same meaning for them as for its Western critics. In many of these writings the term "imperialist" is given a distinctly religious significance, being used in association, and sometimes interchangeably, with "missionary," and denoting a form of attack that includes the Crusades as well as the modern colonial empires. One also sometimes gets the impression that the offense of imperialism is not—as for Western critics—the domination by one people over another but rather the allocation of roles in this relationship. What is truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers. For true believers to rule misbelievers is proper and natural, since this provides for the maintenance of the holy law, and gives the misbelievers both the opportunity and the incentive to embrace the true faith. But for misbelievers to rule over true believers is blasphemous and unnatural, since it leads to the corruption of religion and morality in society, and to the flouting or even the abrogation of God's law. This may help us to understand the current troubles in such diverse places as Ethiopian Eritrea, Indian Kashmir, Chinese Sinkiang, and Yugoslav Kossovo, in all of which Muslim populations are ruled by non-Muslim governments. It may also explain why spokesmen for the new Muslim minorities in Western Europe demand for Islam a degree of legal protection which those countries no longer give to Christianity and have never given to Judaism. Nor, of course, did the governments of the countries of origin of these Muslim spokesmen ever accord such protection to religions other than their own. In their perception, there is no contradiction in these attitudes. The true faith, based on God's final revelation, must be protected from insult and abuse; other faiths, being either false or incomplete, have no right to any such protection.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

John Mitchel photo
Milton Friedman photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
George D. Herron photo
Jane Roberts photo
Sania Mirza photo
Meher Baba photo
Warren Farrell photo
Max Pechstein photo
Roza Otunbayeva photo
Roger Manganelli photo

“While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 185
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Gordon Strachan photo
Larry Hogan photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jane Goodall photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Stafford Cripps photo
Francis Escudero photo
Bukola Saraki photo
Frances Kellor photo
David Attenborough photo
Anu Partanen photo
James Bradley photo
Abd al-Karim Qasim photo
W. Richard Scott photo
Jose Peralta photo
Amir Taheri photo
Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Doing philosophy was an opportunity to learn something new. I expected this to be an adjunct to my practice of architecture. But it turned out the other way. It turned out that the philosophy of science gave me the opportunity to design social systems, and I was more interested in people-oriented systems than in buildings. They were both design, but different kinds of design. I like creating things.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Ackoff cited in: Carole Novak (2000) " Interview with Russell L. Ackoff http://www.ait.net/technos/tq_09/3ackoff.php". in: Technos Quartely. Fall 2000 Vol. 9 No. 3. This quote is the answer to the question, why Ackoff switched from architecture to philosophy in his graduate studies.
2000s

Miklós Horthy photo
Miles Davis photo
Charles A. Beard photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“I enjoy gambling, I find ample opportunity in gambling to engage my mind and study.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

जूवा (Gambling)

Al Gore photo
Eric Frein photo
Werner Erhard photo
Jeremiah Denton photo
Sophie B. Hawkins photo
Enoch Powell photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Al Gore photo

“More important than his record as a debater is Mr. Bush's record as a president. And therein lies the true opportunity for John Kerry — notwithstanding the president's political skills, his performance in office amounts to a catastrophic failure.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

"How to Debate George Bush" in The New York Times (29 September 2004) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29gore.html?ex=1254196800&en=b0a4fff00be52eb0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland.

Frances Kellor photo
Mengistu Neway photo
Alberto Gonzales photo
Warren Farrell photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

Clifford D. Simak photo

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Nancy Cartwright photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The small and imperfect mixture of representative government in England, impeded as it is by other branches, aristocratical and hereditary, shows yet the power of the representative principle towards improving the condition of man. With us, all the branches of the government are elective by the people themselves, except the judiciary, of whose science and qualifications they are not competent judges. Yet, even in that department, we call in a jury of the people to decide all controverted matters of fact, because to that investigation they are entirely competent, leaving thus as little as possible, merely the law of the case, to the decision of the judges. And true it is that the people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositories of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government. Hereditary bodies, on the contrary, always existing, always on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of the people.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)

William Hazlitt photo

“The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know and motives to study or practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)