While our behavior is still significantly controlled by our genetic inheritance, we have, through our brains, a much richer opportunity to blaze new behavioral and cultural pathways on short timescales.
Getting older is the best thing that ever happened to me. I wake up every morning rejoicing that I'm still here with an opportunity to begin again and be better
We all have choices that we are empowered to make on a daily basis, and while those choices can be limited by affordability and accessibility, we still have the opportunity to make our best choice. That best choice usually requires more effort and more thought, but, undeniably, the results are worth it.
I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man's Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.
Life is a gift from God, an unlimited series of opportunities to find the good in ourselves and others. There is good in everything, if we are willing to see it.
I come from a great family and I was raised by wonderful parents. There is no question that I was given a lot of interesting and unique opportunities growing up...But I think people often misunderstand that I work as hard and want things just as badly as anybody else.
It cannot be denied that outward accidents conduce much to fortune, favor, opportunity, death of others, occasion fitting virtue; but chiefly, the mold of a man's fortune is in his own hands
My life story is something obviously that belongs to me very personally. And the fact of the matter is that I had choices and chances and opportunities that were provided to me, based on the way I was able to direct my own decision-making. And what I'm working to fight for is to make sure that all women have the ability to do that.
Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.