Quotes About Opportunity

Whatever chemistry she and Jason had had was still there, if only in the form of regret about never really having acted on it.

Einar had been attracted to the Communist notion that his labor was being exploited by East Coast capitalists. Then one day, listening to a Communist fulminate in Pioneer Square, he'd had a eureka moment in which he realized that the way to get ahead in his new country was to exploit some labor himself.

He could see the desired outcomes, the drowning at sea, the shotgun blast, the plunge from a height, so near to him still that he refused to believe he had lost the opportunity to avail himself of their relief.

A caste society," wrote U.S. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel 25 years ago, "violates the style of American democracy.… The nation in effect does not have a truly public school system in a large part of its communities; it has permitted what is in effect a private school system to develop under public auspices.… Equality of educational opportunity throughout the nation continues today for many to be more a myth than a reality.

Turning in his seat, he gestures at the street and shrugs. "If you don't, as an American, begin to give these kids the kind of education that you give the kids of Donald Trump, you're asking for disaster.

The New Jersey constitution, says the court in its decision, requires that all students be provided with "an opportunity to compete fairly for a place in our society.… Pole vaulters using bamboo poles even with the greatest effort cannot compete with pole vaulters using aluminum poles.

She was here to get rich and richer and then get out from under these men, not to accommodate mediocre mumbling coves. A man should be able to afford his own expulsions.

Life is fundamentally up for grabs

Often it was the most unlikely people who found within themselves a spark of something greater. It was probably always there, but most people are never tested, and they go through their whole lives without ever knowing that when things are at their worst, they are at their best.

There are moments that define a person's whole life. MOMENTS in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become hinge on a single decision.

The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

With writing, we have second chances.

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life.

She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with a chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently.

I think about all of the things I've done, Oskar. And all of the things I didn't do. The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life [...]

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we only have one life

In other words, if everyone wants to play Hamlet all at once, they couldn't because there aren't enough skulls.

It is a shame that we have to live but it is a tragedy that we get to live only one life.

In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently. I would change my life. I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me. I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself. I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them.

The soul was not ready to transcend, but was sent back, given a chance to right a previous generation's wrong.

It wasn't too late to turn around, before I got to the place I couldn't come back from.