Quotes About Opportunity

New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. But at the end of the day, there has to be a degree of foresight -- a sense of where new riches lie. So radical innovation is always one part fortuity and one part clearheaded vision. [first-line bold by author] [2002] p.23

Contrary to conventional wisdom, what makes a job low skilled is not the nature of the work it entails, or the credentials required, but whether or not the people performing the task have the opportunity to grow their capabilities and tackle novel problems. The most important lesson to be gleaned from post-bureaucratic pioneers is that it's possible to radically upskill what would otherwise be regarded as low-skilled jobs

One of the biggest regrets of life, I think, is a sense of having gone on the trip but missed the adventure.

After all, many cops subscribe to the notion that most homicide victims die by their environment, their lifestyles, and there's no question that prostitutes make themselves easy victims of opportunity.

We cannot cause growth; we can only create a climate in which growth can take place.

universal service and a need to ensure that high-speed Internet connections are available to everyone, wherever they are.

discoveries happened because they needed to happen. He

Just as bad things could snowball, Brian found that good things could come fast as well.

If you keep walking back from good luck, he thought, you'll come to bad luck.

We each live in our own time...And we must do the best we can with our time. Those who came before weren't as lucky as us and we aren't as lucky as some who may come later. We must still live in our own time and do the best we can.

You never beat the game...You go in, take what you need, get out. Never stay too long and never, never try to whip the game. Stay there too long and they figure you out, start chewing at the corners on you, know your betting. Then maybe two, three of them get together and whipsaw you.

All the planning in the world, men, can't compare to perfectly timed good luck.

You can lead a human to water, but you can't make him drink.

Hush, child. Don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone gets to start over again. This America, hon. One dream dies, you get another.

I wonder what children whose parents have money think about in their spare time.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

Barry had always wondered why people who were just upper-middle class in New York chose to stay there, given that they could live like minor dictators in the rest of the country. "You're negative arbing yourself," he used to say.

And you never felt like becoming an American? She didn't know why she was pressing him on this one point. That's for people without options, Ed said. Sorry, I mean... He trailed off. No, I get it. Nation in free fall.

I own an island. Because when you have a chance to own an island, you just do.)

High-risk leadership beckons many, but few accept the call.

Because there is no opportunity to act. It is always wise to talk a great deal, discussing what has been done and what may be done, when nothing can be done. All the great political movements of history were born in prisons.

For, as Seneca said, 'Loss of chattels may recovered be, but time, once lost, we shall never see.' It will not come again, without doubt, no more than will Molly's maidenhead, when she has lost it because of her wantonness. Let us not grow mouldy thus in idleness.

Lost money is not lost beyond recall, But loss of time brings on the loss of all.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER