Quotes About Opportunity

Why did she want to go to sea and live the rough unglamorous life of a seaman? 'Because they told me Negro women couldn't get in the union. You know what I told them?' I shook my head, although I nearly knew. 'I told them, "You want to bet?" I'll put my foot in that door up to my hip until women of every color can walk over my foot, get in that union, get aboard a ship and go to sea.

Don't lose what you had to get something which just may not work.

The white kids had better vocabularies than I and, what was more appalling, less fear in the classrooms. They never hesitated to hold up their hands in response to a teacher's question; even when they were wrong they were wrong aggressively, while I had to be certain about all my facts before I dared to call attention to myself.

Three black men walked past us wearing airline uniforms, visored caps, white pants and jackets whose shoulders bristled with epaulettes. Black pilots? Black captains? It was 1962. In our country, the cradle of democracy, whose anthem boasted 'the land of the free, the home of the brave,' the only black men in our airports fueled planes, cleaned cabins, loaded food or were skycaps, racing the pavement for tips.

I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. They shield themselves with an aura of unavailableness (for which after a time they begin to take credit) largely as a defense tactic. In my particular case, I could not hide behind the curtain of voluntary goodness. I was being crushed by two unrelenting forces: the uneasy suspicion that I might not be a normal female and my newly awakening sexual appetite.

The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Ganguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.

There is a time in every man's life when he must push off from the wharf of safety into the sea of chance.

When I tried to explain how his generosity afforded me the opportunity to improve my writing skills, he shrugged his shoulders and said, I manage artists who make more in one night than you have ever made in a year. Yet I know no one more talented than you. His patronage was a gift as welcome as found money bearing no type of identification.

We learned the times tables without understanding their grand principle, simply because we had the capacity and no alternative.

Hadn't I always, forever and ever, thought that life was just one great big risk for the living?

I want to go to school. College. Get a degree. I want to make a difference.

Sometimes second chances are the very best chances," she whispered. "Because this time we'll get it right.

Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all. One. Two. Three. Blink.

You know. Life's short. If you don't try new things, you'll never know what you're best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don't work for you.

I think we're given multiple chances to meet multiple soulmates. Sure, you could meet a soulmate in highschool. But that doesn't mean if you don't act on it, you'll never meet anyone else. You will, just at a time that's more convenient for you.

I think we make our own luck. Our parents give us life, but what we do with that life is our own responsibility.

There are nice, funny, totally good-looking guys out there. You just have to know where to look…and apparently, where NOT to look.

People everywhere pray for a job where they can "work from home," so I guess, going with the gratitude theme, I should be grateful for this opportunity. I wonder how, though, when people get one of these jobs, they keep themselves from spending the entire day going on YouTube and looking at videos about baby deer that have been adopted by golden retrievers. Because that's all I've accomplished today so far.

Yes, storms are damaging, but we need them because they clear away the bracken that prevents new flowers from having a chance to grow. And of course we need the sun to shine on those new flowers that without the storm might never have had a chance to bloom.

All I did was die,' I said. 'And then, when presented with an opportunity not to be dead any more, I took it. Anyone else would have done the same thing.

In order for people to be happy, sometimes they have to take risks. It's true these risks can put them in danger of being hurt.

You're in Europe. You're young. Young people have been going to Europe on a shoestring for a hundred years.

There are nice, funny totally good-looking guysout there. You just have to know where to look…and apparently, where NOT to look. Which is in the ladies' shower of your dorm.

Rule #12 We all make mistakes, and we all deserve a second chance.