Quotes About Opportunity

The more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.

There isn't so much love in the world that you can turn it away when it's offered.

Leopards did not chase prey like cheetahs, or stalk the tall grass like lions. The leopard simply set up on a wet spot, above the mud, out of sight, hidden. The leopard didn't need a cheetah's speed, or have to search for prey like a lion. The leopard knew if he staked out something his prey wanted, his prey would come to him.

he believed the window of time through which he could enter was shrinking.

Geography does not determine individual character, but it does matter.

Lincoln had risen to this pinnacle through migration, self-education, and hard work.

many of the young people who are, in fact, progressive have been emigrating en masse for jobs and new lives abroad, leaving the reactionary ones behind.

Geography informs, rather than determines. Geography, therefore, is not synonymous with fatalism.

They grew up in an era when public education and community support for kids from all backgrounds managed to boost a significant number of people up the ladder—in Bend, Beverly Hills, New York, Port Clinton, and even South Central LA. Those supportive institutions, public and private, no longer serve poorer kids so well.

The answer is that the destiny of poor kids in America has broad implications for our economy, our democracy, and our values.

investment in poor kids raises the rate of growth for everyone, at the same time leveling the playing field in favor of poor kids.

Our contemporary public debate recognizes this problem but assumes it is largely a "schools problem." On the contrary, we have seen that most of the challenges facing poor kids are not caused by schools.

inequality of opportunity slows growth by keeping disadvantaged potential workers from developing their full capacity.

Schooling—unequal as it is in America—plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps.

there's no denying that rich and poor kids in this country attend vastly different schools nowadays, which seems hard to square with the notion that schools are innocent bystanders in the growing youth class gap.

we tend not to begrudge others their success or care how high the socioeconomic ladder is, assuming that everyone has an equal chance to climb it, given equal merit and energy.

These two types of equality are obviously related, because the distribution of income in one generation may affect the distribution of opportunity in the next generation—but they are not the same thing.

Rich kids are more confident that they can influence government, and they are largely right about that.14 Not surprisingly, poor kids are less likely to try.

Most fundamentally, school systems need to put higher quality teachers in poor schools under conditions in which they can actually teach and not just keep order.

often within a single school, AP and other advanced courses tend to separate privileged from less privileged kids.

often within a single school, AP and other advanced courses tend to separate privileged from less privileged kids. Later on, kids from different class backgrounds are increasingly sorted into different colleges: for example, by 2004, kids from the top quarter of families in education and income were 17 times more likely to attend a highly selective college than kids in the bottom quarter.

We realize it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extraordinary.

Then perhaps you should consider that Samuel's presence might very well be a perfect opportunity to put into practice some of the principles to which this school, and this parish, give lip service—to love one another and to display compassion to those who are different.

You rely on your speed too much. A young man's vanity. An old man learns to absorb pain and wait for an opportunity.