This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The man who grasps an opportunity as it is paraded before him, nine times out of ten make a success; but the man who makes his own opportunities is, barring an accident, a sure-fire success!" - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"The trouble with most of us is that we keep our eyes closed to opportunities that thrust themselves at us; and rare is the man who searches for his opportunity or sees one even when he stumbles over it." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
"To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition." - Eric Hoffer
"Opportunity makes a thief." - Francis Bacon
"Opportunity's favorite disguise is trouble." - Frank Tyger
"Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living which give man not only enough to live by, but something to live for." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity." - George Bernard Shaw
"Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their centre." - George Santayana
"Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best." - George Washington
"Men make history and not the other way round. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better." - Harry S. Truman
"[Central Intelligence Agency] analysts were only too aware that no one has ever been penalized for not having foreseen an opportunity, but that many careers have been blighted for not predicting a risk. Therefore the intelligence community has always been tempted to forecast dire consequences for any conceivable course of action, an attitude that encourages paralysis rather than adventurism." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"What is leisure but opportunity for more complete and entire action?" - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress, and as the evening twilight fades away the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." - Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
"Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult." - Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
"In the heat of [social] movements brains are set stirring with new ideas which live on through quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world around us." - Howard Zinn
"A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known." - Ivan Illich
"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death." - James Francis Byrne
"The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires. Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own furtive of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit; bad thoughts, bad fruit." -
"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are mor than enough for others." - Jane Austen
"Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world." - John Burroughs
"Thou stronger seducer, opportunity! of womankind, half are undone by thee." - John Dryden
"Danger will wink on opportunity." - John Milton
"Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God." - John Quincy Adams
"Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, every knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both." - John Stuart Mill
"Each major stage of development offers a window of opportunity distinctly different from anything that has come before. The increase of intelligence at each stage of development is disproportionately greater than the increase exhibited in the previous stage, similar to the order of increase found in the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"Make haste slowly, and do not be slothful when opportunity beckons." - Kahlil Gibran
"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity." - Kahlil Gibran
"The greatest power God gave us is the power to choose. We have the opportunity to choose whether we’re going to act or procrastinate, believe or doubt, pray or curse, help or heal. We also choose whether we’re going to be happy or whether we’re going to be sad." - Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
"In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end... since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of meaningful old age." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Every one must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet the supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up one’s fortune." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"A man may have wisdom and discernment, but that is not like embracing the favorable opportunity." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"No one is born with good character. It's not hereditary. Yet everyone, regardless of background, enters the world with the opportunity to become a person of exemplary character." - Michael S. Josephson
"If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway… You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
"Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat." - Napoleon Hill
"More democratic societies, including the United States, instituted measures to impose discipline on the domestic population and to institute unpopular measures under the guise of "combating terror," exploiting the atmosphere of fear and the demand for "patriotism" - which in practice means: "You shut up and I'll pursue my own agenda relentlessly." The Bush administration used the opportunity to advance its assault against most of the population, and future generations, in service to the narrow corporate interests that dominate the administration to an extent even beyond the norm." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"Positive thinkers get positive results because they appreciate the inestimable value of a day, this day, not the next day, but this day, and every day. Today offers at least sixteen hours that may be crammed full of opportunity, joy, excitement, achievement." - Norman Vincent Peale
"Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"No great man over complains of want of opportunity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in ever fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The richness of life; the love and joy and exhilaration of life can be found only with an upward look. This is an exciting world. It is cram-packed with opportunity. Great moments wait around every corner." - Richard M. DeVos, Sr.