890 – “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”

–anonymous

888 – Roger Ebert on the 1950s from Pleasantville Review

“Nothing creates fascists like the threat of freedom. Pleasantville [(1998)] is the kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent. Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom. I grew up in the ’50s. … My house had a picket fence, and dinner was always on the table at a quarter to six, but things were wrong that I didn’t even know the words for.”

–Roger Ebert [See Source Notes for full context]

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742 – Eleanor Roosevelt on Universal Human Rights

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.

Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.”

–Eleanor Roosevelt

602 – John McCain on the State of the World

“The times we live in are alternately derided for their failings and romanticized for their emerging opportunities. It sometimes seems that we now live amid greater violence, greater uncertainty; that the world suffers more conflicts and tragedies; that the poor are poorer and greater in number; that race, ethnicity and nationalism divide us more intractably than ever before.
But that is not so. Human beings are still capable of violence and cruelty. We all succumb to sin. But look back at any preceding century or even just a few decades, and you will see cruelty, violence and misery on a scale that is, with few exceptions, unknown today.”

–John McCain, United States Senator from Arizonia

569 – “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.”

–Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility

324 – “If you want you life to be a magnificent story, then begin by realizing that you are the author and everyday you have the opportunity to write a new page.”

–Mark Houlahan

132 – “A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.”

– George W Bush, 43rd President of the United States of America