Quotes About Opportunity

There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men.

White Americans, stop apologizing; we live in the greatest country in the history of mankind, and it's there because of our ancestors - those who came to this country and did their very best. And every generation has gotten better at what we're good at.

When you look at every studio in the '20s or '30s, from Louis B. Mayer to Jack Warner, you see people who started with one plan and quickly shifted gears to adapt to a changing world. One of my favorite stories is that Walt Disney mortgaged his house to make 'Snow White.' He saw there was a real opportunity to change the world.

Had I been pushed like Colonel Parker pushed Elvis, had I been a white boy like Elvis, sure, it would have been different.

I don't even want to touch on the topic of black quarterback, because I think this game is bigger than black, white or even green.

Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.

Jay White has a great chance to make his name off of me. But I'm not going to make that easy.

I got lucky. To be frank, I was surrounded by white teachers who never did the whole, 'You're never going to amount to nothing' thing you hear about in the South. Instead, they would say, 'You're really smart. You can do this.' If I hadn't gotten that, I don't know where I'd be.

For example, I was a White House intern the summer before I dropped out of law school. Everybody knew about it. I'd come home and go to church and everybody would say, 'Oh, my God. Demetri, you're working at the White House.'

Part of the great thing of looking back on how I went from the cattle ranch to the White House was, I was a country music DJ. I saw Garth Brooks perform for free in 1992 at the Colorado State Fair where I met this person who knew about this graduate school program.

I can pretty much call anyone, whether at the White House, in a company or in the media. I have access, because of the silliness of the entertainment world and how people react to it. It gave me an enormous opportunity to do anything I really want to.

He never has made a living. He went from my grandparents' house to the very regimented military school, back to the house, to my grandfather's company, to the Trump Organization, which I view as a sinecure for him. And then 'The Apprentice,' whatever that was, and the White House.

We need women who are at the head of a boardroom, like at the head of the White House, at the head of kind of major scientific enterprises so that little girls everywhere can then think, you know what? I can do that, I want to do that, I will do that.

The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.

My new mission is, and I've said this to the White House, I want the Buy America to be real. I want the Buy America to be by small businesses, African American businesses, Latino and Asian, but in particular our African American businesses who heretofore couldn't even find the front door of government contracts.

For example, I was privileged to be working at the White House under the Clinton administration and had not finished my Ph.D., and I thought I was the cat's meow.

When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.

I never dreamed I would one day work at it White House.

All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House.

To go to the White House is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In fact, the building is not that big.

For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.

A woman is more than the sum of her parts. So I had an opportunity to present some work at the White House. I chose not just to talk about the sky, the planet, love or heartache. I wanted to actually be there, to place a mark on that moment.

Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq War, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster.

Working at the White House is an honor for any preacher's kid from Magnolia, but the issue is jobs.