Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win.
—Robert A. Heinlein in Time Enough for Love
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
—Albert Camus
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
—Thomas A. Edison
The world is full of hundreds of beautiful things we can never possibly have time to discover, and there is no time to be unkind or envious or ungenerous, and no sense in enslaving the mind to the trivialities of the moment. For you can be equal to the greatness of life only by marching with it; not by seeking love but by giving it, nor seeking to be understood but learning to understand. And when it is all over, there will be an agony of remorse because one spared the effort and did not make more of that little span of opportunity; and knowing reality at last, who knows but that one will look back with unassuageable regret upon one's pitiful little faith.
—Vivienne de Watteville
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
—Laurence J. Peter
Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
—Robert A. Heinlein
The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
—Helen Rowland
If you have the ability and the opportunity to help someone, but you don't do anything just because you're scared or it's inconvenient or something, then maybe you're just as bad as the people who caused the trouble in the first place.
—Bree Despain in The Lost Saint
You don't gain much in life if you never allow yourself to be vulnerable. Sometimes the best things in life happen when we open our hearts and give someone the opportunity to hurt us, and trust them not to, and they don't.
—Terry Bolryder in Bearlebrity
When you're young, you always think you'll meet all sorts of wonderful people, that drifting apart and losing friends is natural. You don't worry, at first, about the friends you leave behind. But as you get older, it gets harder to build friendships. Too many defenses, too little opportunity. You get busy. And by the time you realize that you've lost the dearest best friend you've ever had, years have gone by and you're mature enough to be embarrassed by your attitude and, frankly, by your arrogance.
—Kate Jacobs in The Friday Night Knitting Club
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
—Benjamin Disraeli
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
—Bulgarian Proverb
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
—Demosthenes
You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait.
—Ellen Metcalf
There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
—General Douglas Macarthur