Quotes About Opportunity

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.

I firmly believe in luck. And I noticed: the more I work, the luckier I become.

All is safe where all can read, is a quotation from Thomas Jefferson showing his belief in the importance of everyone knowing how to and being able/allowed to read. I would like to take it one step further. I would say, All is BETTER when all can read. No matter what you like to read, the ability to read it, understand it, and enjoy it, truly enriches your life.

You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time

If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have

What good would politics be, if it didn't give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.

At thirty a man steps out of the darkness and wasteland of preparation into active life it is the time to show oneself, the time of fulfillment.

Men] act in response to an outward situation, and on being presented with an opportunity to conform to a pattern. If the pattern gives licence to cruelty, so much the better. They take advantage of the licence so thoughtlessly, so thoroughly, that it becomes perfectly clear: the generality of mankind are only waiting for the chance, only waiting for outward circumstance to sanction brutality and allow them to be cruel and brutal to their heart's content.

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Not everybody benefits from a misspent youth.

Yet after night fall most any layover here, it seemed that they ended up cruising the bleak arterials of dismal L.A. backwaters, seeking out of some helpless fatality the company of lowlifes of opportunity.

Slippery use of the word "privilege" is part of a vogue of calling achievements "privileges"—a vogue which extends far beyond educational issues, spreading a toxic confusion in many other aspects of life.

Various mental tests or scholastic tests have been criticized as unfair because different groups perform very differently on such tests. But one reply to critics summarized the issue succinctly: "The tests are not unfair. Life is unfair and the tests measure the results.

If you are not prepared to undergo the extended toil and sacrifice that some particular endeavor may require, then despite having all the native potential for great success in that endeavor, and with all the doors of opportunity wide open, you can nevertheless become an utter failure.

One of the most central—and most controversial—premises of the civil rights vision is that statistical disparities in incomes, occupations, education, etc., represent moral inequities, and are caused by "society.

If you are serious about education, then you need to start a lot earlier than fifteen years old to give each child a decent shot at life in the real world, as distinguished from make-believe equality while in school. Ability grouping or "tracking"—so hated by the ideological egalitarians—is one of the best ways of doing that.

Most notable achievements involve multiple factors—beginning with a desire to succeed in the particular endeavor, and a willingness to do what it takes, without which all the native ability in an individual and all the opportunity in a society mean nothing, just as the desire and the opportunity mean nothing without the ability.

The initial wealth of a group and its time of arrival are obviously important, as many wealthy "old families " show, but the Jews arrived late and penniless in the nineteenth century and are now more affluent than any other ethnic group.

Top colleges turn out extraordinary graduates because they take in extraordinary freshmen. That tells very little about what happened in the intervening four years, except that it did not ruin these individuals completely. It tells even less about what would have happened if these same extraordinary people had been educated elsewhere. Whether a given individual will do better, either educationally or financially, by going to a bigname college is very doubtful. Hard

Access is one of the great dishonest words of our times. I have had as much access to a career in professional basketball as Michael Jordan had. He just happened to play the game a lot better. Indeed, practically everybody has played the game a lot better than I did.

Geography is not egalitarian.

opportunity alone is not sufficient for economic or other accomplishments.