Seize Opportunity Quotes & Sayings

I saw the prospect of serving as labor secretary as a wonderful opportunity to further the policies that I have been fighting for my whole life, and I had to seize it. — Hilda Solis

Sure, you can choose the safety and predictability of the cage, forfeiting the adventure God has destined for you. But you won't be the only one missing out or losing out. When you lack the courage to chase the Wild Goose, the opportunity costs are staggering. Who might not hear about the love of God if you don't seize the opportunity to tell them? Who might be stuck in poverty, stuck in ignorance, stuck in pain if you're not there to help free them? Where might the advance of God's kingdom in the world stall out because you weren't there on the front lines? — Mark Batterson

With five chances on each hand and one unwavering aim, no boy, however poor, need despair. There is bread and success for every youth under the American flag who has energy and ability to seize his opportunity. — Orison Swett Marden

There were undoubtedly those to whom killing was easy and pleasurable: he had met a few such. Millions had been successfully trained to end others' lives; he, Strike, was one of them. Humans killed opportunistically, for advantage and in defense, discovering in themselves the capacity for bloodshed when no alternative seemed possible; but there were also people who had drawn up short, even under the most intense pressure, unable to press their advantage, to seize the opportunity, to break the final and greatest taboo. — Robert Galbraith

Atheists as well as theists unconsciously observe society's convention that we must be especially polite and respectful to faith. And I never tire of drawing attention to society's tacit acceptance of the labelling of small children with the religious opinions of their parents. Atheists need to raise their own consciousness of the anomaly: religious opinion is the one kind of parental opinion that - by almost universal consent - can be fastened upon children who are, in truth, too young to know what their opinion really is. There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. Seize every opportunity to ram it home. — Richard Dawkins

Yet in all those cases I finally steeled myself to seize the opportunity, and find a way to muddle through and eventually conclude that I had, in fact, chosen the right path, as risky as it seemed at the time. — Vint Cerf

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

Manage the remarkable balance between acting from your heart and close to your gifts with completing the obligations that your labor and tasks require of you. Leverage opportunity AND seize joy. — Mary Anne Radmacher

To be a poet in today's technological age means to be underrated and at times, ignored. In a world where the noise of industry reigns supreme, the poet's voice is being drowned out, but it is a voice that is desperately needed. Our words ring out into the atmosphere and calls the masses back to their senses. We must seize this opportunity and remain true to our purpose in society. Ours is a most noble duty, here to represent the misunderstood and underrepresented, and one day, one person will heed the call of our words and the world will be set ablaze! — Dara Reidyr

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

Just seize every opportunity you have, embrace every experience. Make a mark, for all the right reasons. — Chrissie Wellington

Life is like an escalator. You see, it carries you on regardless. And you might as well enjoy the view and seize every opportunity while you're passing. Otherwise, it'll be too late. — Sophie Kinsella

When fortune wishes to bring mighty events to a successful conclusion, she selects some man of spirit and ability who knows how to seize the opportunity she offers. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity. To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip? — Eminem

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it. — Al Capone

If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations ... don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer. — Josh Billings

You can see opposition and imposition or you can see an opportunity. As a part of the Slytherin House, I choose to see opportunity. If you've chosen to see opposition, and I seize your opportunity, I assure you that it is less selfless and more self-serving. In these situations you'll walk away thanking me, but I'll be all the richer for reaping the benefits of my choice, while you will walk away never knowing what you could have had. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

He that tries to seize an opportunity after it has passed him by is like one who sees it approach but will not go to meet it. — Khalil Gibran

It's when ordinary people rise above the expectations and seize the opportunity that milestones truly are reached. — Mike Huckabee

Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again. — Aidan Chambers

Sometimes in this life, only one or two opportunities are put before us and we must seize them no matter the risk. — Andre Dubus III

The tsunami that cleared the shoreline like a giant bulldozer has presented developers with an undreamed-of opportunity, and they have moved quickly to seize it. - Seth Mydans, International Herald Tribune, March 10, — Naomi Klein

I just hate meetings. Though it's true that once you've made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don't want to seize every opportunity to do so. — J.K. Rowling

I know how to choke. Given even a splinter-thin opportunity to let my side down and destroy my own score, I will seize it. Not only does ice water not run through my veins, but what runs there has a boiling point lower than body temperature. — John Updike

Although we are never glad when tragedy visits, we can be aware and seize the opportunity to do good in this world, even in the midst of tragedy. — Jim Rohn

You must have the courage to trust your instincts and be ready to question what other people don't. If you do that, you can seize opportunities that others would miss. Believe in yourself, and use everything you can - including the obstacles - to propel you along the road to success. Who knows what you might achieve? — Richard Branson

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

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it. — Richard M. Nixon

Freedom from militarism will give the German people the opportunity, if they will but seize it, to apply their great energies and abilities to the works of peace. — James F. Byrnes

Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel? — Jane Austen

Luck comes and goes; you have to seize it. Bad luck comes and goes; it must be overcome. But I will never, never sit at the side of the road showing my wounds and shouting, 'It's destiny'! — Jean Van Hamme

If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character. — John Viney

Never forget, Caelius, that a great man makes his luck. Luck is there for everyone to seize. Most of us miss our chances; we're blind to our luck. He never misses a chance because he's never blind to the opportunity of the moment. — Colleen McCullough

Your purpose on earth is to participate in this human experience and to seize the opportunity within each day to reveal the greatest version of yourself. — Steve Maraboli

We should seize every opportunity to give encouragement. Encouragement is oxygen to the soul. The days are always dark enough. There is no need for us to emphasize the fact by spreading further gloom. — George Madison Adams

A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations. — Marcel Herrmann Telles

I urge the Iraqi leadership for sake of its own people ... to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people. — Kofi Annan

Let us seize the special opportunity that is ours to act boldly and decisively at a time when the eyes of our fellow citizens, both present and future, are upon us. — Bob Taft

Every day you have the opportunity to learn and experience some-thing and some-one new. Seize the opportunity. Learn and experience everything you can, and use it to change the world. — Rodney Williams Jr.

It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buckpassers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame. — David Ogilvy

Seize any opportunity or anything that looks like opportunity. — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

But simple luck is the random birthright of the hapless. When seasoned by the subtleties of accident, harmony, favor, wisdom, and inevitability, luck takes on the cast of serendipity. Serendipity happens when a well-trained mind looking for one thing encounters something else: the unexpected. It comes from being in a position to seize opportunity from the happy marriage of time, place, and chance. — Margot Lee Shetterly

You may have had someone ask you, "What can I do for you?" Instead of postponing the offer by responding with "I'll let you know," seize the opportunity with a specific response. What's even better is when your answer benefits the both of you. — Lisa A. Mininni

You fool, You have been dangling For such a long time! When will you seize the opportunity Or feel the necessity To untangle the taut knot Of your bondage-life? — Sri Chinmoy

You're being opportunistic."
"I won't deny it. Why don't you seize the opportunity, as well? I want to kiss you. And you need kissing, desperately. — Tessa Dare

Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity. — Gary Ryan Blair

Stuff doesn't matter - boats, cars, fancy things don't matter. What matters, what will matter to me, is the love of the people around me, and did I take a chance? Did I seize an opportunity to do something for people with the talents that I was lucky enough to be given? Did I make a difference in the lives of people who needed me? — James Comey

Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. — Orison Swett Marden

Being a winner sometimes has little to do with the score. If your players seize the opportunity to be better today than they were yesterday in softball, in math, in music, in anything worth doing in life, regardless of natural ability, that will make them winners on and off the field. — Lawrence Hsieh

Independent film is such a huge deal in the UK. There aren't many big budget studio movies that get greenlit at all. The indie film industy is a great opportunity that I'm trying to seize. — Aml Ameen

Opportunity is never lost ... it simply moves on to someone else if you don't seize it! — Kim Garst

In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: being prepared to seize the moment and having the courage to take your best swing. — Hank Aaron

I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure nothing bad happens. I will do anything to make sure we have the time for everything that we want, but I'm not stupid enough to disregard the fact that something may happen that I can't control. And, dammit, I don't want to look back and see that I didn't seize the chance to make you mine, to really prove that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That I lost that opportunity. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Technology has given us this wonderful opportunity to have low energy costs. We have to seize that, rather than keep debating and discussing and fighting over it. — Michael Porter

But, I've learned, as we all must, that adults are jerks too. At least some of them. And that's why I feel so strongly that if you have the opportunity to surround yourself with people who aren't jerks, you should not just take it, but grab it, seize it, squeeze the living hell out of it. — Clinton Kelly

Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did. — M.L. Stedman

The O.T.O. is an initiatory order similar to freemasonry. It doesn't provide educational monographs or standardized tests. Rather, it offers members the opportunity to experience a series of dramatic and magical initiations artfully designed to awaken and unfold the candidates' spiritual potentialities. If a member did nothing else with the O.T.O. career but undergo these degree experiences, they would be immeasurably rewarded. Serious members know, however, that there is much more to the O.T.O.'s magick than a two-hour ceremony performed once or twice a year. So profound are the Order's inner mysteries that to penetrate them requires not only a rich magical and spiritual education, but also a high level of meditative attainment. Members who wish to truly affiliate at this level are expected to seize responsibility for their own magical education and eventually rend the veil of the Order's mysteries for themselves. — Lon Milo DuQuette

Every great leader is a great teacher, and the greatest leaders seize every opportunity to teach well. — Albert Mohler

Because I was poor I had one special advantage. When you are poor, and basic survival is your concern, you have no alternative but to be an entrepreneur. You must take action to survive just as you must take action to seize an opportunity. — Naveen Jain

The European Union, which is not directly responsible to voters, provides an irresistible opportunity for European elites to seize power in order to impose their own vision on a newly socially regimented Europe. — Maggie Gallagher

If heads of states fail to seize the opportunity of our entry into the third millennium to provide for a better government of planet Earth, history will not forgive them - if there is a history. — Robert Muller

I've got the opportunity of a lifetime. Some great things are happening because of momentum and I'm just trying to seize the moment. — Eric Thomas

How, in good conscience," Alessandro asked, "can you ride across the countryside in perfect safety, as if you were on holiday, stopping mainly to swim and eat oysters, while men are crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches?" "Because the object of war is peace, and I have merely thrown out the middle. If everyone did the same, no one would be crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches." "Everyone doesn't have the privilege. You do because you're a field marshal in command of a microscopic unit." "I realize that," Strassnitzky answered, "and, given such a rare opportunity, of which most men cannot even dream, I would be unforgivably remiss if I failed to seize it, would I not? I exploit it to the full. — Mark Helprin

We must seize every opportunity we can to speak the truth and proclaim peace. Especially now. There's so little time for many. — Francine Rivers

I believe in opportunity and the power of reason to seize upon it. — Spartacus

With each game I play, with each season I play, I'm running out of chances ... you're never guaranteed next year. You're never guaranteed the next game. You have to seize the opportunity when it's there in front of you. — Brett Favre

We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we should be making anyhow for other reasons. — Russell E. Train

You're always trying to seize any opportunity or hold on to one if you already have it. It was just a matter of going out there and producing for the team. — Jose Bautista

The greatest writers in the world have stolen the greatest Story ever told, time and time again. Christians should recognize this Story and seize the opportunity presented by this towering influence. — Gene C. Fant Jr.

This was always the case with North Korea. It was like the bad boyfriend whose presence could never be depended on, so you always had to seize the opportunity to spend time with him when he made himself available. — Suki Kim

I am always saddened by the death of a good person. It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges. I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased than to live this way. — Steve Maraboli

When success is one thought away, think it.
When success is one word away, speak it.
When success is one deed away, perform it.
When success is one step away, take it.
When success is one moment away, seize it. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Whether we want them or not, the New Year will bring new challenges; whether we seize them or not, the New year will bring new opportunities. — Michael Josephson

Seize every opportunity that life offers you because, when opportunities go, they take a long time to come back. — Paulo Coelho

If you don't seize the opportunity, how do you know what will happen? Sometimes you have to take the chance — Eileen Cook

Seize every opportunity along the way, for how sad it would be if the road you chose became the road not taken. — Robert Breault

Inbetween yesterday's regret and tomorrow's dream is today's opportunity. Seize the chance! — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

It's definitely important to be open enough to seize an opportunity when the opportunity is there. — Will Oldham

When the opportunity was at your hand, you did not dare to seize it. When the opportunity was lost, it became precious. — George R. Stewart

Who can tell?
Your living is an organized hell.
The mansion of your mind just an oversized cell.
The pressure, everything is done to a measure.
In the sea of competition sunk like a treasure.
Like a feather falling slow spiraling to the floor.
Strung up like a broken violin to your course.
Opportunity is knocking at your door,
But you never left a welcome mat (It doesn't matter anymore.).
Or anyhow, but you're too late to turn back.
Fate pushing you into the wall like a thumbtack.
Ain't no comebacks in this game of life.
Roll the dice again,
Roll it once, never twice.

Keep on going, and taste the stars.
Keep on growing, and raise the bar.
You're living life for the As down to the Zs,
After one drop you got a fountain to seize.

Wanna break from the world, but the world wanna break you,
The weight makes your backbone curl up and make you. — Tablo

Beginning today, I will create a new future by creating a new me. No longer will I dwell in a pit of despair, moaning over squandered time and lost opportunity. I can do nothing about the past. My future is immediate. I will grasp it in both hands and carry it with running feet. When I am faced with the choice of doing nothing or doing something, I will always choose to act! I seize this moment. I choose now. — Andy Andrews

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

The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform. — Satya Nadella

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain — William James

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

Men make history and not the other way around. 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

More than money, talent, or your number of contacts, your capacity to create mutuality with others can transform you into a sought-after Opportunity Maker with whom people most want to align. Be the glue that sticks the right teams together to solve problems or seize opportunities sooner and better together. — Kare Anderson

As legal residents, immigrants would contribute more in taxes, spend more at our businesses, start companies of their own and create more jobs. Immigration is not a problem for us to solve but an opportunity for America to seize. — Jose Andres

Proper preparation ensures that when an opportunity is presented to you, you are ready to seize it and excel. — Tyler Basu

We bring our preparation to the table, and opportunity may present itself, and if you are well prepared, you can seize opportunity and then maybe something good happens, and you call that luck. — Michael Mann

I take every opportunity to articulate to others the ways that they have blessed and influenced me. I hold sweet memories of making the opportunity to thank teachers who have influenced me. I encourage everyone to seize opportunities to tell people who have made a gift of knowledge or influence. — Mary Anne Radmacher

There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on.
The choice is never simple. It's never easy. It's not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realized
that the test was always about the heart ... The rest is just practice. — Jaime Buckley

Whenever there's a tragedy involving gun use, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the gun-control lobby and the news media seize it as another opportunity to exploit the emotions of uninformed American people for political gain. — Walter E. Williams

This American system of ours', he shouted, 'call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if only we seize it with both hands, and make the most of it'. A month later in New York I was telling this story to Mr John Walter, minority owner of The Times. He asked me why I had not written the Capone interview for the paper. I explained that when I had come to put my notes together, I saw that most of what Capone had said was in essence identical with what was being said in the leading articles of The Times itself, and I doubted whether the paper would be best pleased to find itself seeing eye to eye with the most notorious gangster in Chicago. — Claud Cockburn

Let us seize, friends, our opportunity from the day as it passes. — Horace

You gave him an opportunity of showing greatness of character and he did not seize it. He will never forgive you for that. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What we have done though is consistently looked for additional opportunities to get stuff done. Wherever we see a possibility of increasing wages, creating more jobs, making sure that more people are able to access opportunity, we're gonna seize it. — Barack Obama

The world can therefore seize the opportunity (the Persian Gulf crisis) to fulfill the long held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind. — George H. W. Bush

Ask today as you consider the many choices in your view - what is the highest and best use of your talents, skills and abilities? When you answer that, seize the opportunity to sharpen those qualities even more sharply by applying your focused effort. — Mary Anne Radmacher