Land Of Opportunity Quotes

You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.' ~ Geoffrey Canada

We know that they cannot bear their share of the taxes to help pay for their education. And unless those children get a good education we know that they become dropouts and they become delinquents and they become taxeaters instead of taxpayers. We know that they will join the unemployed. That is why we put top priority on breaking the vicious cycle that today threatens the future of 5 million children in this great land of opportunity which we talk about so much. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

When my family decided to leave England I could not have been happier. I was sort of like - America seemed like the land of opportunity and, you know, it was Hollywood to me. ~ Aasif Mandvi

When they say America is the land of opportunity, it's true. If you work hard, people appreciate you. ~ Vijay Singh

The land of opportunity, where credentials mattered less than demonstrated ability. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

Americans believe that they still live in the land of opportunity - the country that offers the greatest chance of economic advancement. But this is no longer the case. ~ Erik Brynjolfsson And Andrew McAfee

That's where the theatre of dreams is, over in L.A.; it's the land of opportunity for actors, and to go over there with a good team behind you and have a part you want to audition for really makes it a joy. ~ Luke Pasqualino

As elected leaders, we must each recommit ourselves to work together toward putting our country on a prosperous, sustainable path and restoring America's promise as a land of opportunity. ~ Martha Roby

Now they were satisfied to express their individuality through which Rogers they preferred at the Saturday matinee: Ginger or Roy or Buck. America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it's the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door ~ Amor Towles

This coup de main gave Morgan the means to make himself a Jamaican planter
and to secure a knighthood, respectability and the governorship of the colony. It
also, like Drake's similar exploits a hundred years before, made a deep impression
on the public imagination and reinforced that popular image of distant lands as
places where quick fortunes were waiting for the energetic and ruthless. ~ Lawrence James

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

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

Life in Britain had seemed like one long antechamber to a room that had too many barriers to entry; here in the USA it seemed to be true that if you dared to give things 'your best shot' then the other much-used phrases like 'land of opportunity' would kick in as well. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates live in large suburban homes. How is this girl to understand her poverty? Since history textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the failures of working-class Americans to transcend their class origin inevitably get laid at their own doorsteps. ~ James W. Loewen

America is the land of opportunity. His children will have more than he once did. ~ Nicola Yoon

In fact, there are many unique satisfactions here. One is that Americans seem to outstrip every nation for hope. Perhaps because so many of us came in flight from something worse, or rose from poverty here, or absorbed the fact and fiction of the "land of opportunity," or just because optimism itself is contagious - whatever the reason, hopefulness is what I miss the most when I'm not here. It's the thing that makes me glad to come home. After all, hope is a form of planning. ~ Gloria Steinem

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American. ~ Lionel Sosa

The Land of Opportunity is an attitude. ~ B. J. Gallagher Hateley

Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. ~ Barack Obama

The nation that values youth and thinness is the most obese in the world. The place where the dollar rules has more diparity between rich and poor than any other industrialized nation. Although peace is one of its highest ideals, the United States is well known for violence. More people use drugs regularly in this land of opportunity than in the rest of the world put together. And more people per capita are imprisoned in the land of the free than in any other Western country. ~ David Suzuki

We should be proud that so many want to come to America, that it is still seen as the land of opportunity. Let's make it a land of legal work, not black-market jobs. Let's make it a land of work, not welfare. Our land should be one of assimilation, not hiding in the shadows. ~ Rand Paul

In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself," said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. "Truly, this a land of opportunity. ~ Terry Pratchett

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity. ~ Sidney Altman

We still believe in the America that is a land of opportunity and a beacon of freedom. We believe in the America that challenges each of us to be better and bigger than ourselves. ~ Mitt Romney

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

My parents immigrated to the United States with $10 in their pocket and a belief that the America they had heard about really did exist as the land of opportunity. ~ Mia Love

The land of opportunity", "The American dream", "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness": these are the sounds of the great sucking mechanism of the American parasite. The reliance of seduction and persuasion over coercion that sold democracy to the American people eventually sold it to the rest of the world. Although there are a minority of examples of the direct parasitism of involuntary immigration, especially slaves from Africa and the "legal" incorporation of Native Americans, voluntary immigration through the lure of freedom and and equality is only a more indirect form of parasitic predation. What is voluntary can be no less predatory than coercion, just as capitalism can be no less predatory than military imperialism. From the point of view of competition among nations, the point is not whether a citizen or their ancestor originally arrived voluntarily or involuntarily, but whether a nation or ideology is successful in harnessing its human resources towards its national interest or way of life. American parasitism works because it offers the secular Judaism of liberalism rather than the secular Christianity of communism. Communism could never compete with the immigrant American hope that they themselves might one day be a filthy rich capitalist. ~ Mitchell Heisman

The weapon, our weapon, is the desire and tendency to answer a simple question: What can I do to make this work? In any situation, what can I do to get what I want? Some people, after college, will move back home and sit in their parents' basements, blaming the unpredictable economy and the truly bizarre job market. That's how they will make this world work for them. But not us. The ones who refuse to take no for an answer. We will make our way in spite of the fact that the America this generation has been given is not the America that this generation was told we would get. Is this the land of opportunity? No. Now we're dealing with the land of strategy. Obstacles? We must see none. Dilemmas? They must be all the more fun. We will succeed. We just have to find a way. ~ Paul Downs Colaizzo

I believe the sense of lost opportunity is rooted in a faulty understanding of God's grace. Likewise, when grace is grasped and embraced, the Land of Opportunity becomes yours again. ~ David Jeremiah

As recently as fifty years ago my grandmother was picking cotton with bleeding fingers. I think about her all the time while I'm getting overpaid to sit at a computer, eat Chinese takeout, and think up things in my pajamas, The half century separating my fingers, which are moisturized with cucumber lotion and type eighty words per minute, and her bloody digits is an ordinary Land of Opportunity parable, and don't think I don't appreciate it. ~ Sarah Vowell

(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom - and the recession made it much worse. (g) There has been a hollowing out of the middle class. (h) There is little income mobility - the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth. (i) And America has more inequality than any other advanced industrialized country, it does less to correct these inequities, and inequality is growing more than in many other countries. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

In the coming year, I believe we can make sure America lives up to its legacy as a land of opportunity if the President is willing to back up his rhetoric with substance. ~ Ron Kind

That someone like Obama could be elected president of the United States - with its unrivaled power and prestige - has begun to restore the country's and the world's faith in America as the land of opportunity. ~ Dee Dee Myers

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes? ~ Edward Hoagland

President Obama has been a disaster for America. He's wrecked our economy, saddled our children with more debt than America managed to rack up in 225 years, and gone around the world apologizing for our country - as if the greatest nation in the world needs to apologize for being a land of opportunity and freedom, which we were before Obama became president. ~ Donald Trump

I have been a refugee for the last forty years in the luminous land of opportunity. Still my heart is aching with hiraeth for my native land. ~ Debasish Mridha

America is still the land of opportunity for most, but it is not a land of opportunity for all. If we are to remain an exceptional nation, we must close this gap in opportunity. ~ Marco Rubio

The fact is: It's true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it. ~ Christopher Hitchens

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

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. ~ George Eliot

Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less's generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite - do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain? ~ Andrew Sean Greer

A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Seek the joy and beauty of life to find the opportunity in life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. ~ Henry George

In addition to the original Executioner series I have also written a number of other works with diverse taste, even poetry. None, however, have provided the pleasure of touching so many people from so many lands as have the Executioners. ~ Don Pendleton

Gah!' Coach Hedge yelled. The canopy ripped and he fell behind the bar with a crash of bottles and glasses. The satyr recovered well. He popped up with a dozen miniature plastic swords in his hair, grabbed the soda gun and served himself a drink.
'I like it!' He tossed a wedge of pineapple into his mouth. 'But next time, kid, can we land on the floor and not ten feet above it? ~ Rick Riordan

I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I've always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters. ~ Harrison Ford

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise. ~ Aldo Leopold

Unless you have prepared yourself to profit by your chance, the opportunity will only make you ridiculous. A great occasion is valuable to you just in proportion as you have educated yourself to make use of it. ~ Orison Swett Marden

Why should they love us?Why do you think the Arabs are not entitled to resist strangers who come here suddenly as if from another planet, and take away their land and their soil, fields, villages and towns, the graves of their ancestors and their children's inheritance? We tell ourselves that we only came to this land "to build and be rebuilt", "to renew our days of old", "to redeem our ancestors heritage", etcetera, but you tell me if there is any other people in this world who would welcome with open arms an incursion of hundreds of thousands of strangers, and then millions of strangers, landing from far away with the weird claim that their holy scripture, which they brought with them also from far away, promise this whole land to them and them alone. ~ Amos Oz

A great lie is like a great fish on dry land; it may fret and fling and make a frightful bother, but it cannot hurt you. You have only to keep still, and it will die of itself. ~ George Crabbe

So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own. ~ Michael Shaara

Land forests are the coral reefs of the ocean of air. ~ Steven Magee

You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours. ~ Steve Martin

I think that there are too many external factors. Sometimes, you can't think of the right thing to say or the lights are too bright or you break out in hives. Sometimes it's simply impossible to speak because your throat has closed up entirely and you miss the opportunity to say what you need to say and you know that the opportunity will never present itself again. ~ Maria Kennedy

There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. ~ A.B. Simpson

The role of government has never been to plan every detail or dictate every outcome. At its best, government has simply knocked away barriers to opportunity and laid the foundation for a better future. Our people
with all their drive and ingenuity
always end up building the rest. And if we can do that again
if we can continue building that foundation and making those hard decisions on behalf of the next generation
I have no doubt that we will leave our children the America that we all hope for. ~ Barack Obama

It's the big new bridge," said Serge. "Takes you right across Lake What-the-Fuck." "Is that another real name?" "No," said Serge. "That's what I call it. It's really named Lake Surprise. But surprise is usually something good that provides delight, like winning the lottery or reaching in the back of the fridge and finding an unexpected jar of olives. But this lake got its name because it pissed people off." "How'd it do that?" "Another funny story. When Henry Flagler started the Overseas Railroad down the Keys, he looked for the route with the most land, because bridges over water cost more. So he sent out surveyors, and they began laying tracks south from the mainland of Florida, across some little islands and an isthmus to Key Largo. And I can't believe they built that far before realizing that right in the middle of a big chunk of land was this giant lake, and now they have to build an extra bridge that wasn't in the budget. ~ Tim Dorsey

Each of us has the potential to contribute ... You have a great opportunity to make a new shape of the world. ~ Dalai Lama

We are responsible for the quality of our vision, we have a say in the shaping of our sensibility. In the many thousand daily choices we make, we create ourselves and the voice with which we speak and work. ~ Carolyn Forche

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. ~ Jeremy Narby

For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

The fall of the nation, there is no;
Faithfulness,
Kindness and
Knowledge of God in your sacred land. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Emotions bleed where love frowns and despair smiles
My home is within the core
The center of this place, it lays down my heart for love
My love's (in) the Center of War ~ Criss Jami

Hers was an evil-sounding chuckle that Anna loved. The sort of chortle Dorothy might have heard shortly before all hell broke loose in the land of Oz ~ Nevada Barr

I sprang toward him with the stake, hoping to catch him by surprise. But Dimitri was hard to catch by surprise. And he was fast. Oh, so fast. It was like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. He halted my attack with a glancing blow to the side of my head. I knew it would hurt later, but my adrenaline was running too strong for me to pay attention to it now.

Distantly, I realized some other people had come to watch us. Dimitri and I were celebrities in different ways around here, and our mentoring relationship added to the drama. This was prime-time entertainment.

My eyes were only on Dimitri, though. As we tested each other, attacking and blocking, I tried to remember everything he'd taught me. I also tried to remember everything I knew about him. I'd practiced with him for months. I knew him, knew his moves, just as he knew mine. I could anticipate him the same way. Once I started using that knowledge, the fight grew tricky. We were too well matched, both of us too fast. My heart thumped in my chest, and sweat coated my skin.

Then Dimitri finally got through. He moved in for an attack, coming at me with the full force of his body. I blocked the worst of it, but he was so strong that I was the one who stumbled from the impact. He didn't waste the opportunity and dragged me to the ground, trying to pin me. Being trapped like that by a Strigoi would likely result in the neck being bitten or broken. I couldn't let that happen.

Richelle Mead

Not one foot will I fly, so long as breath bides within my breast; for, by Him that shaped both sea and land, this day shall end my battles or my life. I will die King of England. ~ Richard III Of England

I'd still say that visiting the stores and listening to our folks was one of the most valuable uses of my time as an executive. But really, our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. Period. ~ Sam Walton

We have no business squatting on other people's land and we have only ourselves to blame if they take a dim view of it. I mean, c'mon, what would you do if someone barged into our house and just took it over? How would you react? Are you going to say, welcome, intruders, take it all, we'll gladly confine ourselves to the bathroom. That is, until you want us out of the bathroom as well. Then we will happily kill ourselves and leave you to deal with our bodies as you please. Is that what you would say? Of course not. You would make a complete ruckus. So why are you surprised when other people do the same? ~ Sonal Panse

Part of the beauty and wonder of being alive is the opportunity to make your own choices and create your own meaning. ~ Armin Navabi

Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed to be visualizing. I couldn't visualize anything. I tried and tried but there was just nothing at all; I felt like a fraud doing the practice because it didn't feel natural to me. ( ... ). So he encouraged me by saying that as long as you have these kinds of doubts, your practice will be good. ~ Pema Chodron

And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause--and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you're afraid that you will lose your job, or you're afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you're afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

After all my years of doing instrumental music I still like just a simple instrumental song with a nice catchy melody and an opportunity to play a solo over a harmonic structure. ~ Stanley Clarke

A few years ago, I was trying to buy a piece of land next to a house I had in Newfoundland. I discovered that the plot had been owned by a family, and the son had gone off to World War I and been killed. It began to interest me: What would have happened on that land if the son had lived, had brought up his own family there? ~ Michael Winter

Of this last kind of comparisons is that quoted from the elder Cato, who, when asked what was the most profitable thing to be done on an estate, replied, "To feed cattle well." "What second best?" "To feed cattle moderately well." "What third best?" "To feed cattle, though but poorly." "What fourth best?" "To plough the land." And when he who had made these inquiries asked, "What is to be said of making profit by usury?" Cato replied, "What is to be said of making profit by murder? ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

The studies of women's lives over time portray the role of crisis in transition and underline the possibilities for growth and despair that lie in the recognition of defeat. The studies of Betty and Sarah elucidate the transitions in the development of an ethic of care. The shifts in concern from survival to goodness and from goodness to truth are elaborated through time in these two women's lives. Both studies illustrate the potential of crisis to break a cycle of repetition and suggest that crisis itself may signal a return to a missed opportunity for growth. These portraits of transition are followed by depictions of despair, illustrations of moral nihilism in women who could find no answer to the question "why care? ~ Carol Gilligan

Butterflies are symbols of hope. They land beside us, like sunbeams, and belong to us for a moment, but then they fly away. And while we wish they might have stayed longer to share their beauty, we feel blessed for having s-seen them. ~ RaeAnne Thayne

Make the most of the opportunity. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word "good" so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment "when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view. ~ Marilynne Robinson

The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her. ~ Robin Jarvis