Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.
Gary Berntsen, head of the CIA in Afghanistan there, he was a field commander. And he has a book out called "Jawbreaker." And he says we missed an opportunity at Tora Bora to get him. We put resources elsewhere. That's been a critique of the administration. Did we miss opportunities?
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.
The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity.
Acts of sacrifice and decency without regard to what's in it for you create a ripple effect. Ones that lift up families and communities, that spread opportunity.
Maybe it's a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those other worlds - promising untold opportunities - beckon. Silently, they orbit the Sun, waiting.
Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.
We have a historic opportunity to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran, and to do so peacefully, with the international community firmly behind us. We should seize that chance.
Falling prices are driving renewable energy investment in India, which rose 13 per cent last year and is expected to surpass 10 billion dollars in 2015. Adoption of increasingly cost-effective renewables holds the genuine promise of a new age of socio-economic development, powered by clean, increasingly decentralised, and sustainable energy. The opportunity for India is tremendous.
Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare--not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people's lives.
The messages on our banners in 1979 - freedom, opportunity, family, enterprise, ownership - are now inscribed on the banners in Leipzig, Warsaw, Budapest and even Moscow.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging? Framed in a more positive light, this tells us also that if we wish to accomplish a particular thing then we need to increase our level of desire for that thing and to create or seek out the opportunities and right environment for it to happen without fail.