Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

-Angelou, Maya originally MayaJohnson
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.35

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

-Austen,Jane
Sense and Sensibility, vol.2, ch.12.

Opportunity makes a thief.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Letter to the Earl of Essex.

OG = PLR ¿ AEB: the opportunity for graft equals the plethora of legal requirementsmultiplied by thenumber of architects, engineers and builders.

-Birns, Harold
  Formula for bribery in building and housing codes. In the NewYork Times, 2 Oct.

I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to me, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity† For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Harold Skimpole. Bleak House, ch.6.

Thou strong seducer, opportunity!

-Dryden,John
  The Conquest of Granada, pt.2, act 4, sc.3.

It is the good fortune of the affluent country that the opportunity cost of economic discussion is low and hence it can afford all kinds.

-Galbraith,John Kenneth
Economics, Peace, and Laughter.

Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of responsibility.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
   Address at Vanderbilt University,19 May.

Conservative ideal of freedom and progress: everyone to have an unfettered opportunity of remaining exactly where they are.

-Madan, Geoffrey
Collected in Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks (published1981).

I hope†to build a society of opportunity. By opportunity,Imeananopensocietyöa society inwhich what people fulfil will depend upon their talent, their application, and their good fortune.What people achieve should depend particularly on those things, and Ihope increasingly inthefuturethatthat will bethe case.

-Major,John
   Address on entering No.10 Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, 27 Nov.

The media have, indeed, provided the Devil with perhaps the greatest opportunity accorded him since Adam and Eve were turned out of the Garden of Eden.

-Muggeridge, Malcolm
  Christ and the Media, introduction.

All method is imperfect. Error is all around it, and at the least opportunity invades it† But what can we do? There is no other way.

-Nicolle, CharlesJules Henri
  Biologie de l'Invention.

Know thine opportunity.

-Pittacus of Mytilene
Attributed. Quoted in Chambers Biographical Dictionary (5th edn,1990).

I stand for the square deal†not merely for fair play under thepresent rules of thegame, but for having those rules changed, so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunityand of reward for equally good service.

-Roosevelt,Theodore
  Speech, Osawatomie, 31 Aug.

Seldom is it given to one generation to have such an opportunity to rise again, but now before you is that opportunity in televisionöa larger, richer, broader opportunity than ever existed in radio.

-Sarnoff, David
c.1948  Speech to NBC station affiliates. Recalled on his death, 12 Dec1971.

   Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Man and Superman,'Maxims for Revolutionists: Marriage'.

   [Lord Rosebery] was a man who never missed an occasion to let slip an opportunity.

-Shaw, George Bernard
Quoted byWinston Churchill in Great Contemporaries (1937). English jurist,  Attorney General  (1945^51)  and President of the Board  of Trade  (1951).  He  established  his  reputation  as  chief British  prosecutor  at  the  Nuremberg Trials  (1945^6),  and  as prosecutor  in  the  Fuchs  atom  spy  case  (1950).  He was  made  a life peer in1959.

We will do our best to reward your faith in us, but please give us the opportunity to serve our country, that is all we ask.

-Smith,John
  Address to a European Gala Dinner,11 May.They were his final public words; he died the next morning of a heart attack.

What a marvellous opportunity for attacking the devil!

-Stead,WilliamThomas
Letter of appointment to the Northern Echo, quoted by Harold Evans in his preface to Ray Boston The Essential Fleet Street (1990).

Youare bornwithtwothings: existenceand opportunity, and these are the raw materials out of which you can make a successful life.

-Templeton, Charles
  Succeeding.