Quotes about opportunity

If you real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are.

— James Allen

You can't always wait for the guys at the top. Every manager at every level in the organization has an opportunity, big or small, to do something. Every manager's got some sphere of autonomy. Don't pass the buck up the line.

— Bob Anderson

We trained hard ... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization

— Gauis Petronius Arbiter

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation.

— Jane Austen

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

— Francis Bacon

Opportunity makes a thief.

— Francis Bacon

Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity that was at hand.

— Bruce Barton

Opportunities are everywhere. The recession might be drawing to a close, but its continuing legacy is employers' reliance on short-term staff. There may be fewer jobs for life, but there are more jobs in a lifetime.

— Lucy Benington

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.

— Milton Berle

Lack of opportunity is often nothing more than lack of purpose or direction

— Best of Bits and Pieces

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

— Richard Branson

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Opportunity dances with those who are ready on the dance floor.

— H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Today's opportunities erase yesterday's failures.

— Gene Brown

If you view all the things that happen to you, both good and bad, as opportunities, then you operate out of a higher level of consciousness.

— Les Brown

You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.

— Warren Buffett

Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.

— Warren Buffett

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

— John Burroughs

When you feel that you have reached the end and that you cannot go one step further, when life seems to be drained of all purpose: What a wonderful opportunity o start all over again, to turn over a new page.

— Eileen Caddy

This American system of ours. call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.

— Al Capone

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: Are your ready?

— Johnny Carson

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.

— Paul Cezanne

Be ready when opportunity comes. Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.

— Roy D. Chapin Jr.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.

— Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

— Winston Churchill

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

— Jeremy Collier

Start where you are. Distant fields always look greener, but opportunity lies right where you are. Take advantage of every opportunity of service.

— Robert Collier

You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.

— Robert Collier

As fast as each opportunity presents itself, use it! No matter how tiny an opportunity it may be, use it!

— Robert Collier

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pygmy.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities, but to make them.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Many of us spend our lives searching for success when it is usually so close that we can reach out and touch it.

— Russel H. Conwell

Too often the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it's too late.

— Rita Coolidge

The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.

— William Taylor Copeland

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.

— George W. Crane

Make the iron hot by striking it.

— Oliver Cromwell

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

— Demosthenes

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.

— Emily Dickinson

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

— Benjamin Disraeli

A good deal happens in a man's life that he isn't responsible for. Fortunate openings occur; but it is safe to remember that such breaks are occurring all the time, and other things being equal, the advantage goes to the man who is ready.

— Lawrence Downs

Thou strong seducer, Opportunity!

— John Dryden

There is far more opportunity than there is ability.

— Thomas A. Edison

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

— Thomas A. Edison

Be an opener of doors.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every wall is a door.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sad truth is that opportunity doesn't knock twice. You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come. Where will you be a few years down the line. Will it be everything you dreamed of. We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don't give a second thought to the chances we take.

— Gloria Estefan

Little opportunities should be improved.

— Francois FeNelon

Sometimes only a change of viewpoint is needed to convert a tiresome duty into an interesting opportunity.

— Alberta Flanders

Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity's door if you ardently wish to enter.

— B. C. Forbes

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

— Benjamin Franklin

There are always opportunities through which businessmen can profit handsomely if they will only recognize and seize them.

— J. Paul Getty

Enlarge the opportunity and the person will expand to fill it

— Eli Ginzberg

The right man is the one that seizes the moment.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

You must make your own opportunities.

— John B. Gough

If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a-coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the road side until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.

— John B. Gough

One must pass through the circumference of time before arriving at the center of opportunity.

— Baltasar Gracian

You can't wait for the phone to ring. You have to ring them.

— Lord Lew Grade

Was a great high wall there that tried to stop me. Was a great big sign there said private Property but on the back side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me.

— Woody Guthrie

Some people expect the door of opportunity to be opened with an electric eye.

— Howard Hendricks

A chip on the shoulder indicates that there is wood higher up.

— Jack Herbert

Don't ever slam a door, you might want to go back.

— Don Herold

Opportunity often comes in disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

— Napoleon Hill

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

— Napoleon Hill

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities.

— Eric Hoffer

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

— Eric Hoffer

About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

— Herbert Clark Hoover

Let us my friends snatch our opportunity from the passing day.

— Horace

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

— Lee Iacocca

When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through.

— Jesse Jackson

Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.

— Thomas Jones

Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.

— Henry J. Kaiser

When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don't see the one that has opened for us.

— Helen Keller

Written in Chinese, the word crisis, is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represent opportunity.

— John F. Kennedy

There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.

— Charles F. Kettering

Take a lesson from the mosquito. She never waits for an opening -- she makes one.

— Kirk Kirkpatrick

Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us daily.

— Sally Koch

When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.

— Rama Krishna

Some say opportunity knocks only once, That is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it. If the chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it.

— Louis L'Amour

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.

— Ann Landers

Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

When you have the opportunity, you strike.

— Rod Laver

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

— Bruce Lee

One can present people with opportunities. One cannot make them equal to them.

— Rosamond Lehmann

What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live -- with your self-respect alive and growing.

— Maxwell Maltz

Opportunities, many times, are so small that we glimpse them not and yet they are often the seeds of great enterprises. Opportunities are also everywhere and so you must always let your hook be hanging. When you least expect it, a great fish will swim by.

— Og Mandino

The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. Every business transaction is an opportunity -- an opportunity to be polite -- an opportunity to be manly -- an opportunity to be honest -- an opportunity to make friends.

— Orison Swett Marden

It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.

— Orison Swett Marden

The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.

— Orison Swett Marden

Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.

— Orison Swett Marden

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.

— Karl Marx

Our opportunities to do good are our talents.

— Cotton Mather

Not being beautiful was the true blessing... Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

— Golda Meir

People wait for opportunity to come along...yet it is there every morning.

— Dennis the Menace

You are, at this moment, standing, right in the middle of your own acres of diamonds.

— Earl Nightingale

Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together.

— Earl Nightingale

Always have your hook baited, in the pool you least think, there will be a fish.

— Ovid

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

— Thomas J. Peters

If you see the bandwagon you've missed it.

— James Phillips

Opportunities neglected can never be recovered.

— Proverb