ALBERT EINSTEIN: In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

ANNA GARLIN SPENCER: The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.

BARACK OBAMA: Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

C. WRIGHT MILLS: Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI: Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.

DEMOSTHENES: Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.

HELEN KELLER: When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.