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Michael: Stanley!
Stanley: Can’t you see I’m urinating?
Michael: Listen, listen, Stanley. You don’t need to answer me now.
Stanley: No.
Michael: Just ... I want you to think about it. I am starting my own company ...
Stanley: No.
Michael: You’re not letting me finish and you just lost out on a million dollars.
Stanley: No I didn’t. The Office US s5e21: Two Weeks, NBC 2009
We’re supposed to call everything we don’t want to do ‘opportunities’. The Office US s9e20: Paper Airplane, Jim & Pam’s report of counselling session
My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters. Boris Johnson, cited Daily Telegraph 2 December 2004
Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no secret poet and sank unwept into oblivion. George Eliot, Middlemarch
We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden. Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal ... There is a tendency ... for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious – because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe – some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others – some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with. Woodrow Wilson
My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity ... that’s the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity. Zadie Smith
Not since the 1920s has Britain been more socially unequal. As the gap between the rich and the rest has widened so has the gap in opportunity for their children. Richard Bilton, Who Gets the Best Jobs? BBC 2011
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Nelson Mandela
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual. Albert Einstein
Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfilment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way. Noam Chomsky
That’s a lot of Yamac sauce. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste. Jake, I’m getting that tingling in the lobes. And when a lobe tingles it means only one thing: opportunity. I’m talking about gold-pressed latinum. Maybe four or five bars. Star Trek s1e15: Deep Space Nine: Progress, Nog
Ability is nothing without opportunity. Napoleon Bonaparte
‘In devastation there is opportunity.’ The Corporation, commodities trader, 2003
Opportunity makes a thief. Early 13th century proverb
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
It’s about taking advantage of the opportunities you have right now, and right now we're in a position where you call somebody and they’re willing to pick up and take the call because they’re a fan, you have to take advantage of that and have a chance to capitalize on your ideas. Dwyane Wade
I think luck is the sense to recognize an opportunity and the ability to take advantage of it ... The man who can smile at his breaks and grab his chances gets on. Samuel Goldwyn
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage. Benjamin Disraeli
The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year. Voltaire
O opportunity, thy guilt is great! William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, 876
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar iV iii 2
I appreciate the opportunity you are giving me, Mr Cromwell, as the largest shareholder in Teldar Paper, to speak. Wall Street 1987 starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen & Martin Sheen & Daryl Hannah & John C McGinley & Terence Stamp & James Karen & Hal Holbrook & Sean Young & James Spader et al, director Oliver Stone, Gordon Gecko to Teldar Paper president
Thou strong seducer, opportunity! John Dryden, 1631-1700, The Conquest of Granada
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. Ralph Waldo Emerson
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. Francis Bacon, Essays
I made my exit, and it was not until after I had done so that it occurred to me I had not actually offered her my condolences. I could well imagine the blow the news would be to her, her aunt having been, to all intents and purposes, like a mother to her, and I paused out in the corridor, wondering if I should go back, knock and make good my omission. But then it occurred to me that if I were to do so, I might easily intrude upon her private grief. Indeed, it was not impossible that Miss Kenton, at that very moment, and only a few feet from me, was actually crying. The thought provoked a strange feeling to rise within me, causing me to stand there hovering in the corridor for some moments. But eventually I judged it best to await another opportunity to express my sympathy and went on my way. Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day pp176-177
But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of ‘turning points’, one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. ibid. p179