Albert Einstein:

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

Anna Garlin Spencer :

The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.

Barack Obama:

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

C. Wright Mills:

Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.

Christina Rossetti:

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.

Demosthenes:

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

Douglas MacArthur:

There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.

Helen Keller:

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

Hugh Miller:

Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them.

Irving Kristol:

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

James F. Bymes:

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

May Sarton:

... without darkness
Nothing comes to birth,
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Ovid:

Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

Thomas Alva Edison:

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

Winston Churchill:

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