Quotes & Sayings About Opportunity And Hard Work

It's a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time, that's what I think. Obviously you need to be noticed by people to be given the opportunities, and I think you do have to work hard. — Jill Douglas

The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy. — Robert Sheaffer

I want to thank you for coming to the White House to give me an opportunity to urge you to work with these five senators and three congressmen, to work hard to get this trade promotion authority moving. The power that be, well most of the power that be, sits right here. — George W. Bush

it is hard to find one's calling because many mistakenly believe they need to look only within to discover their passion. Although it is true that we have innate interests and talents, we often do not know what they are until we have real-life experiences. Having a wide range of experiences can help you uncover your inner passion. Try various part-time jobs and internships, or volunteer. Don't be afraid of rolling up your sleeves and diving in. While immersed in a job's reality, you will discover whether it's a good fit. Work experiences may unlock the door to a career opportunity you hadn't considered. Third, — Haemin Sunim

You can do something extraordinary, and something that a lot of people can't do. And if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to. I mean, it's just weakness to quit because something becomes too hard ... — Morgan Matson

We have this myth that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. It's not a very American thing to say, but I don't think that's true. It's true for a lot of people, but you need other things to succeed. You need luck, you need opportunity, and you need the life skills to recognize what an opportunity is. — David Lindsay-Abaire

The next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard? — Eleanor Roosevelt

Hard times do make better people. That in the middle of difficulty lives opportunity. And that each of us is built to win - in both work and life. — Robin S. Sharma

The market system requires that people be committed and willing to work hard. Inherent with that is what I call a merit system, which I think gives people the greatest opportunity. — Lee R. Raymond

We tend to look at successful athletes and make them almost bigger than life. I have seen many young men who have achieved greatness. I have also seen those who have come up a little short of their potential. I do know that those who succeed have been able to recognize within themselves the potential to do something well and then work hard to prepare themselves for that eventual opportunity. Others wait for the opportunity to come and then start to work, thus coming up a little short. — LaVell Edwards

No-one gets an iron-clad guarantee of success. Certainly, factors like opportunity, luck and timing are important. But the backbone of success is usually found in old-fashioned, basic concepts like hard work, determination, good planning and perseverance. — Mia Hamm

And also don't forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work. — Clifford Irving

What I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all - the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead. — Barack Obama

To me, this seems tragic. And this is not an isolated case. In my work, the volume discarded by younger sisters is always greater than the volume discarded by older sisters, a phenomenon surely related to the fact that younger children are often accustomed to wearing hand-me-downs. There are two reasons why younger sisters tend to collect clothes they don't really like. One is that it's hard to get rid of something received from family. The other is that they don't really know what they like, which makes it hard to decide whether they should part with it. Because they receive so much clothing from others, they don't really need to shop and therefore they have less opportunity to develop the instinct for what really inspires joy. — Marie Kondo

There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money. If you fail, do not be discouraged; try again. When you do well, do not change your ways. Success is not just good luck: it is a combination of hard work, good credit standing, opportunity, readiness and timing. Success will not last if you do not take care of it. — Henry Sy

The commonest form, one of the most often neglected, and the safest opportunity for the average man to seize, is hard work. — Arthur Brisbane

If you are posing as religious and are not living the life as stressed by God, you should wake up. It is wrong to be insincere. The best time to begin a religious life is when you are youthful and well. If you have a short time to live, you must work harder at it. And if you have along time to live, you should not waste that precious opportunity. — Paramahansa Yogananda

We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit. But there's nothing in any of the histories we've looked at so far to suggest things are that simple. These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up. — Malcolm Gladwell

So I hope to stretch my acting skills. I got to a point in my dancing where I felt like I did so much hard work and I achieved a lot of great things, and I wanted to try something else and put that same kind of commitment that I did into my dancing into something that I was also passionate about. I had so many opportunities with my dance and now I'm just excited to get better as an actress. — Julianne Hough

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

That taught me how to work harder. I learned all about mental toughness on the practice field. If things weren't working out for me in high school, in college, early in my pro career, my solution was always to work harder and internalize. That way, whenever I got an opportunity, I was always prepared. See, there are a lot of guys who are all talk. They say they want to work harder and be the best, but they never pay the price. I love paying the price. — Tom Brady

I'm all about working. I'm a really hard worker, and I'm taking advantage of all those different opportunities, on the music and acting side, because I love both. — Diego Boneta

We are still a country where hard work and perseverance can earn you a better life ... Yet we are rightfully troubled that many of our people are still caught in what seems to be a pervasive, unending financial struggle ... every American deserves an equal opportunity to achieve success. — Marco Rubio

Foch never for a moment thought about the easy ways of bringing his name before the public and the political world, or even about acquiring a reputation for military insight among the chiefs of the French army. He never posed as a central figure at public functions; he was never interviewed by the press; he made no use of the professional reviews to bring his name before military readers. Ile never published a line until his chiefs suggested the publication of his lectures at the Staff College. From the day when he received his first commission he was a hard-working student of war, patiently preparing himself to do his duty when the opportunity came, and meanwhile content to put all his energies into the work assigned to him. Success in the career of arms is not always associated with high personal character or with this modest pursuit of duty for its own sake. — Andrew Hilliard Atteridge

Have the end in mind and every day make sure your working towards it. — Ryan Allis

I always tried to work hard and stay focused, and just use one opportunity to contribute to the next. — T.I.

My grandmother used to say that flaws are God's greatest gift to humanity, because they give us the opportunity to learn from ourselves and from each other. She said they're not obstacles to perfection, merely signs and guideposts on the path we take in pursuit of it.'
'But if nobody's perfect, no matter how hard we try, then what's the point?'
Harvey didn't look up; he was concentrating hard on his work. 'The universe is infinite; we'll never map its edges, yet NASA keeps on sending up spacecrafts,' he said, folding the metal precisely. 'The point is just to get a little closer. — Anna Jarzab

I went to school and made good grades and went to college. So I was afforded an opportunity through my parents' hard work that most people don't have. — Anthony Mackie

Just remember
if you are really and truly determined to work with animals, somehow, either now or later, you will find a way to do it. But you have to want it desperately, work hard, take advantage of an opportunity
and never give up. — Jane Goodall

I had to work hard and hit the books because the opportunity to play in the NFL is not really that big, so I knew I needed something to fall back on. That's the message I want to send to those kids when I talk to them in person and let them know the most important thing is getting your education. — Jerry Rice

Luck? Luck is hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't. — Lucille Ball

I am telling you now: I might be young, but I am good. I work hard, and I'm a good person. I know what's right. I know what's wrong. And if you give me this chance
if you just give me one shot to show you how good I can be, how hard I work, how much I believe in doing the right thing
I won't let you down. I promise. — Matt Fraction

And if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to. I mean, it's just weakness to quit because something becomes too hard. Am I right? — Anonymous

Through hard work and education, we can deliver a strong economy and opportunity for all. — Julia Gillard

I did it as first lady, I did it as a senator, I did it as secretary of state, and I know how hard it is. It's not something you do once or twice and then throw your hands up because it is grinding work. But it is necessary work. So I am really welcoming of the opportunity to meet with not only people who agree with me but those who don't to see what we can do to try to bridge the differences. — Hillary Clinton

I'm a strong believer that you have to have an equal opportunity to fail and to try things that are hard. I always tell my students, "Don't just take things that are easy for you. If you're really good at math, don't take just math. Take classes that make you write. If you're a really great writer, but bad at math, take math and make yourself work your way through it." — Condoleezza Rice

Of course, preserving the American dream has always meant creating opportunity for the most recently arrived Americans - those who have come here from other parts of the globe to work hard and build a new, better life. — Nydia Velazquez

Microsoft has one more shot at a role in smart phone software through its deployment on Nokia phones. Nokia is still the global market share leader in cell phones. Maybe it will work out, but this is hard to envision great success in the area coming on the heels of so much disappointment in missed opportunity in this important and visible category. — David Einhorn

The same is true for those who do not work hard to find
a good and rewarding job, perform the kind of work they
like to do, and secure a good position in their chosen
career. Even if they achieve a good standard of living, no
amount of material wealth can relieve the emptiness in
their hearts. They experience the same anxious spiritual
state. They live a life of discontentment because they are
so passionately attached to this world, they remain ambitious
for wealth and possessions, and they regard everything
and everyone around them as simply another opportunity
for personal profit. — Harun Yahya

For many people, and particularly in communities of color, the basic bargain of America - that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can share in the nation's prosperity - has become a raw deal. That's what President Obama's opportunity agenda is all about - making good on our country's half of the basic bargain. — Thomas Perez

highly successful people have three things in common: motivation, ability, and opportunity. If we want to succeed, we need a combination of hard work, talent, and luck. — Adam M. Grant

We are going through historic times, and my vision is a world, first of all, in which America continues to be that one indispensable nation. Because we're taking care of our own people, because our economy is strong and our middle class is growing, and people feel like hard work is rewarded, and we are continuing to expand opportunity and diversity and tolerance and respect. — Barack Obama

My parents didn't believe in luck. They believed in hard work and in preparing me to take advantage of opportunity. Like many parents, they taught me to be generous but never to depend on the generosity of others. — Naveen Jain

America can restore its strengths as the world-respected land of opportunity by returning to open-society principles. An open society invests in people and new ideas, rewards talent and hard work, values dialogue and learns from dissent, operates to high standards with transparent information, looks for common ground, sees problems as opportunities for creative change, and encourages those who are fortunate to help others get the same chance, because service is the highest ideal. With such standards in mind, America the Beautiful can return to its admired role as America the Principled. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

I come from a great family and I was raised by wonderful parents. There is no question that I was given a lot of interesting and unique opportunities growing up ... But I think people often misunderstand that I work as hard and want things just as badly as anybody else. — Abby Huntsman

Just believe in yourself and work really hard. And when doors open, take advantage of every opportunity you can. — Chris Tucker

Sometimes opportunities float right past your nose. Work hard, apply yourself, and be ready. When an opportunity comes you can grab it. — Julie Andrews Edwards

I went back to work right away [after prison]. I was very lucky - a friend of mine created a job for me at his company. Most prisoners who come home face really significant challenges when it comes to finding work. It's very, very hard for most people who have a criminal record to get a job. I think the system is very wasteful of taxpayers' dollars. It's also very wasteful of human potential. I found that most people whom I was locked up with were, you know, good people who have skills and value. Prison is a missed opportunity to nurture those things. — Piper Kerman

Someone once told me: 'Luck is when opportunity meets preparation'. And that's what I really feel with my music. I've worked really, really hard on it. It was like, 'this is really what I want to do.. what do I have to do to make it work?' — Erica Packer

Laziness is contagious just like hard work is. I didn't give myself an opportunity to be lazy and I didn't surround myself with people who are lazy. — Michael Chandler

I find most meetings are a waste of time, because they are so ill-prepared and there's little opportunity for true synergy in producing better solutions than what anyone originally thought of. So I work hard to only attend those meetings that have strategic importance and miss all kinds of other seemingly urgent meetings. — Stephen Covey

As a former recipient of these services I can honestly say that the overwhelming majority of TANF recipients are hard-working Americans who are down on their luck, and just want an opportunity to better their lives and those of their family through work and access to education. — Gwen Moore

Diligence and hard work sensitize you to recognize opportunity. — David P. Ingerson

Become one of those people who work hard, invest and build, and at the same time create employment and opportunities for others. — Gina Rinehart

Be patient. Changes that alter the structure of power and widen opportunity require years of hard work, as those who toiled for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, or have been working for the rights of the disabled and gays, would tell you. It took thirty years of continuous fulmination for women to get the right to vote; fifty years of agitation before employers were required to bargain with unionized workers. Those who benefit from the prevailing allocation of power and wealth don't give up their privileged positions without a fight, and they usually have more resources at their disposal than the insurgents. Take satisfaction from small victories, but don't be discouraged or fall into cynicism. And don't allow yourself to burn out. I — Robert B. Reich

Just because you're part of 'Twilight' does not mean you're a superstar. It means that you're given the opportunity to maybe become one later if you work hard. Once fandom goes away, which it will very soon, it's all about having your priorities straight and working hard. — Nikki Reed

I was brought up on a farm, and I've learned that every opportunity that I've had in my life has come from hard work and persistence. — Susan Bysiewicz

The only thing we wanted our young organization to give was an opportunity. We would say to children and to their families: "If you are willing to work hard and make sacrifices and think long term, then Room to Read is the best organization for you. If you're looking for a handout, then you should look elsewhere. — John Wood

I learned to focus and work hard and not give up. I learned that every obstacle is really an opportunity. — Jenna Ushkowitz

For me, every opportunity is a golden opportunity, so I just need to work as hard as I can to maintain credibility and respect and hopefully people enjoy watching me as an actor. — Aneurin Barnard

The people of Central America - and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world - need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions. — Ronald Reagan

I really want people to know that I've worked hard, very hard, to get to where I am today.. this didn't just happen overnight. I started in business over 25 years ago and have found a way to build on what I've learned through every partnership and opportunity. — Magic Johnson

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

The Way I See It: If you're worried about getting a job-or keeping one-start a company of your own. By doing so, you'll reap the rewards of your hard work and you'll only get fired if you fail. This is the land of opportunity. Live in it. — Bruce Campbell

If America is the land of opportunity, a country where perseverance and hard work is rewarded by recognition, then an illegal harbors the opposite ambitions. His greatest reward us anonymity, invisibility. Aided and abetted by market forces and the laws of supply and demand, he hones his skill to stand up but make sure he's never counted. — Bella Pollen

A man has always been seen as someone who works hard and has a full-time occupation. I think women should have the same opportunity and not have any stigma attached to them if they choose to pursue their careers. — Meryl Streep

Americans should never forget that the founders of this country, like all who have served her in uniform, were willing to die defending everything its flag represents. It's so easy to get lost in the controversies that divide us. But I believe, no matter what our race, religion, or beliefs may be, that Americans should be able to come together to keep our country rooted in what made it great: a land of opportunity, a place where people can make something of themselves, limited only by their imaginations and willingness to work hard; a country where we can all come together, whatever our differences, for the greater good; a country of hands up, not handouts, where we try to live by the meaning of the words "Love thy neighbor," and put as much effort into helping others as we do helping ourselves. By doing those things, we can continue to live up to the idea of "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. — Marcus Luttrell

When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so. — Louise Brown

I believe that we are missing a great opportunity. We as Republicans are not really emphasizing what brings us together, and that's conservative values: love of the country. Love of family. Personal responsibility. Hard work. Optimism. Those are the things that we should be communicating to Latinos, and we're doing that very poorly. — Lionel Sosa

Missions are hard. By this point in my quest, however, I had become comfortable with "hard," and I hope that if you've made it this far in the book, you have gained this comfort as well. Hardness scares off the daydreamers and the timid, leaving more opportunity for those like us who are willing to take the time to carefully work out the best path forward and then confidently take action. — Cal Newport

I did enjoy the broadcasting work of King, Punk and Josh Mathews last Monday on Raw. Josh is a hard working young man who does his homework and he did well with his opportunity to sit at the grown up table on Raw. — Jim Ross

She murmured, "Thank you," and stared at him with a pair of longing green eyes that made me want to reach across the table and thump Hamilton on the back of the head. Hard.
Prime opportunity to kiss her, I wanted to tell him.
Kiss her already.
Why wasn't he kissing her?
God, what a pansy.
Instead of kissing, they just kept staring until Ham blinked and then grinned. "Staring contest?" he offered.
Dear fuck. Really.
I groaned and covered my face. I was going to have to work on my boy big time ... I might actually have to defriend him after tonight. — Linda Kage

We must remind Americans that the promise of opportunity remains unbroken - that every person in this great nation can succeed through hard work, courage and personal responsibility. — Brian Sandoval

Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as hard duty. Never regard study as duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. — Albert Einstein

I was lucky, I got offered places and have had some good opportunities. But it is hard work. I suppose I am a bit of a geek when it comes to acting and doing my work. But I was never really nerdy at school, more slightly naughty, so this is my time to be nerdy. — Christine Bottomley

With my son, I work very hard to keep him away from the press and media and I want an opportunity for him to lead as normal a life as possible. — Corey Feldman

Even when I went to America I didn't work for four years. It wasn't like I came to New York and it was the land of milk and honey. It was just as much of a hard graft. But there's a lot more opportunity nowadays across the board for actors, no matter what color you are, with the Internet and small productions. — Idris Elba

The newcomers quickly learned their way about and soon felt at home. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided them, as well as many other pioneers, with an opportunity to acquire land and establish family farms. To the land-hungry immigrants, the tough prairie sod seemed a golden opportunity and they conquered it by hard work. — Harry S. Truman

... I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work. — Orson Scott Card

While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school. — Holly Sprink

Before I ever knew what the word Entrepeneur was, I realized in America and in the Western part of the world in general, you are given the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. And that is all anyone should ever expect from the Capitalist system. The rest is up to you.
It's up to you to educate yourself.
It's up to you to learn speaking skills and people skills.
It's up to you to try (and usually fail, but to try again) all sorts of ventures.
The rest is a combination of hard work, being at the right place ... at the right time ... with the right thing ... oh yes ... and more (never ending) hard work. — Gene Simmons

It's not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it - who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet - that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple. — Charlie Munger

The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it - and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then ... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are. — Naomi Alderman

The best players in any high-stakes field - business, entertainment, law, surgery, as well as sport - recognize that pressure occurs at the moments when meaningful accomplishment is possible. In fact, that is the reason why performers perform: for the opportunity to tackle challenges head on, to do something significant, to demonstrate what their hard work and talent can produce. — John Eliot

I don't know how many more movies I'm going to get the opportunity to make and I don't want to look back and go: "Man, I just floated through that one." Or: "I did that one for the money." I want to be able to say that I worked as a hard as I could and I did the best work that I could do. — Tina Fey

I'm not a believer of luck. I think opportunity and hard work becomes luck. — Prabal Gurung

Our country is failing to live up to its promise of opportunity and fairness. It used to be true that if you went to college and you worked hard, you could count on having a decent middle-class life - but that's just not true anymore. Economic and political changes that have occurred over the past three decades have made the middle-class American dream for today's twenty- and thirtysomethings far less possible than it was for their parents' generation. It's not that we're lazy, that we have no work ethic, or that we have outrageous spending habits. It's that we've been screwed. — Camille Perri

We are compelled to work more hours per day, receive less pay per hour, pay more for what we buy, and recieve less for what we sell. The consequence is that we must work harder and more hours per day than we should, and in the end have less than what is due to us as our part of the advantages, conveniences and opportunities resulting from advancing civilization. — Charles Lindbergh

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work - and realizing what opportunity is and what isn't. — Lucille Ball

At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of greates responsibility and import ... But my central contention is that our near-religious fidelity to the meritocratic model comes with huge costs. We overestimate the advantages of meritocracy and underappreciate its costs, because we don't think hard enough about the consequences of the inequality it produces. As Americans, we take it as a given that unequal levels of achievement are natural, even desirable. Sociologist Jermole Karabel, whose work looks at elite formation, once said he 'didnt think any advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition' as the United States. This is our central problem. And my proposed solution for correcting the excesses of our extreme version of meritocracy is quite simple: make America more equal — Christopher L. Hayes

[The healthcare bill is a] headlong rush into socialism ... we will not stand for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid hijacking of our freedom and democracy so they can impose their socialist 'utopia' of higher taxes, restricted access, inferior quality, and deadly inefficiency on the best health care system in the world ... You and the RNC are all that stand between the Democrats' scheme to take more of your hard-earned income to pay for this unsustainable, freedom destroying entitlement and an opportunity to work for real, truly bipartisan step-by-step solutions ... — Michael Steele

You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and you should have a good agent and you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world. — Susan Orlean

Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy. — Isabel Molina-Guzman