Quotes About Opportunity

No matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny.

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it? Or just let it slip …");

But they do expect that if they're willing to work, they should be able to find a job that supports a family.

Despite all that, they'd given me a chance. Through the noise and chatter of the political circus, they'd heard my call for something different. Even if I hadn't always been at my best, they'd divined what was best in me: the voice insisting that for all our differences, we remained bound as one people, and that, together, men and women of goodwill could find a way to a better future.

I know that the day I raise my right hand and take the oath to be president of the United States, the world will start looking at America differently. I know that kids all around this country—Black kids, Hispanic kids, kids who don't fit in—they'll see themselves differently, too, their horizons lifted, their possibilities expanded. And that alone…that would be worth it.

Cynicism is fashionable these days. But I got to tell you, cynicism didn't put a man on the moon. Cynicism did not create the opportunity for all of our citizens to vote. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or started a business, or fed young minds. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope ... Don't let the cynics get you down. Cynicism is a choice - and hope is a better choice.

America has nothing to fear from these newcomers, that they have come here for the same reason that families came here 150 years ago—all those who fled Europe's famines and wars and unyielding hierarchies, all those who may not have had the right legal documents or connections or unique skills to offer but who carried with them a hope for a better life.

I'd had a chance to meet many Dreamers, both before and after I entered the White House. They were smart, poised, and resilient—as full of potential as my own daughters. If anything, I found the Dreamers to be less cynical about America than many of their native-born contemporaries—precisely because their circumstances had taught them not to take life in this country for granted.

The students and their parents had cheered, many of them waving American flags of their own. I thought about the country I'd just described to them—a hopeful, generous, courageous America, an America that was open to everyone. At about the same age as the graduates were now, I'd seized on that idea and clung to it for dear life. For their sake more than mine, I badly wanted it to be true.

Like a tourist, I watched the range of human possibility on display, trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people I saw, looking for some opening through which I could reenter.

You don't just luck into things as much as you'd like to think you do. You build step by step, whether it's friendships or opportunities.

It seems that politics is becoming a millionaire's club...a poor man just doesn't have a chance these days. It is true that America is becoming more and more anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic--but as long as Americans feel such awe and envy for wealth and power, men like Scranton have a tremendous glamour over any other person no matter how well qualified or intelligent. [1962]

She said the word never represents all the doors we keep closed, that when we say never we close ourselves off from the hope that things can ever be different.

According to a recent poll [...] 94% of Americans agree that people who work fulltime should be able to earn enough to keep their families out of poverty.

America has historically offered space for all sorts of sects, cults, faith healers, and purveyors of snake oil, and those that are profitable, like positive thinking, tend to flourish.

The] strong belief in opportunity and upward mobility is the explanation that is often given for Americans' high tolerance for inequality. The majority of Americans surveyed believe that they will be above mean income in the future (even though that is a mathematical impossibility)."5

If we want developed societies with women doctors, political leaders, teachers, bus drivers, and computer programmers, we will need qualified people to give loving care to their children. And there is no reason why every society should not enjoy such loving paid child care.

Se suele hablar de la arraigada creencia en la oportunidad y en la movilidad social para explicar la alta tolerancia de los estadounidenses ante la desigualdad. La mayoría de los estadounidenses encuestados cree que en el futuro ganará más que la media (a pesar de que eso sea una imposibilidad matemática).

nearly one-fifth of all homeless people (in twenty-nine cities across the nation) are employed in full-or part-time jobs.

Le voy a decir algo que no le va a gustar: una crisis no es una oportunidad".

The shocking thing is that the majority of American workers, about 60 percent, earn less than $14 an hour.

Just now and then, maybe every few weeks and then only for minutes at a time, a breach appeared in the partition and I walked on through, because I have always taken that as a general rule of life: If a door opens, walk on through and at least take a look around.

You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

I got up every day thinking the sun was out there shining, and it could just as well shine on me as any other human person.