Opportunism Quotes

• One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.

  Milton Friedman

  Opportunity, Men, Another Man

  58 Copy quote

• Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.

  Michael Ghiselin

  Hypocrite, Watches, Scratches

  12 Copy quote

• Opportunism is self interest seeking with guile often involving subtle forms of deceit, especially calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse. This vastly complicates the problems of economic organisation. Plainly if it were not for opportunism all behaviour could be rule governed

  Oliver E. Williamson

  Self, Effort, Deceit

  12 Copy quote

• The plan itself is opportunism. There is no plan before that.

  Warren Buffett

  Plans

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• At a time when opportunism is everything, when hope seems lost, when everything boils down to a cynical business deal, we must find the courage to dream. To reclaim romance. The romance of believing in justice, in freedom, and in dignity. For everybody.

  Arundhati Roy

  Dream, Believe, Business Deals

  Arundhati Roy (2006). “Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire”, p.237, Penguin Books India

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• Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Masters, Hard, Altruism

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.68, BookBaby

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• I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.

  Stanley Baldwin

  Principles, Necks, Opportunist

  16 Copy quote

• If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character.

  John Viney

  Character, Successful, Opportunity

  18 Copy quote

• Nowhere has truth such a short life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.

  Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  Short Life, Passion, Self

  9 Copy quote

• No hint of genuine charity ameliorates our vision of society, once sentimentalism has been laid side. What passes for cooperation turns out to be a mixture of opportunism and exploitation. Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.

  Michael Ghiselin

  Hypocrite, Vision, Watches

  7 Copy quote

• There is a time in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

  William Shakespeare

  Change, Taken, Opportunity

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 4, sc. 3, l. 215

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• Counterfeit tolerance includes the opportunism of one who seeks, or accepts, tolerance for himself, as a minority, but who would deny it to others if ever he should be in a position to grant it.

  Carl Joachim Friedrich

  Tolerance, Atheism, Minorities

  8 Copy quote

• The preservation of friendship is seen as opportunism. You are required to be in one camp or the other. You are enjoined to cut your heartstrings if they extend across the barricade.

  Jean Cocteau

  Friendship, Cutting, Preservation

  4 Copy quote

• Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damages morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hung

  Abraham Lincoln

  Military, Saboteurs, Damage

  39 Copy quote

• Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error.

  Tony Blair

  Errors, Democrat, Unified

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• I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.

  Margaret Chase Smith

  Selfish, Taken, Heart

  Declaration of Conscience, delivered 1 June 1950

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• The great ideals of liberty and equality are preserved against the assaults of opportunism, the expediency of the passing hour, the erosion of small encroachments, the scorn and derision of those who have no patience with general principles.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Equality, Erosion, Liberty

  34 Copy quote

• In our timidity and our shoddy opportunism we are always stirred when a man appears on the horizon willing to stake his all on a conviction.

  Clyde S. Kilby

  Men, Horizon, Conviction

  6 Copy quote

• There is a tide in the affairs of men

  William Shakespeare

  Philosophical, Opportunity, Men

  'Julius Caesar' (1599) act 4, sc. 3, l. 215

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• Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Prayer, Pyramids, Hatred

  228 Copy quote

• Ah, reality TV: where opportunists delight in exposing opportunism! It's kind of like the indie music scene.

  Diablo Cody

  Reality, Delight, Tvs

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• The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Party, Struggle, Europe

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• [On Richard M. Nixon:] The Republican nominee would be far worse than another Eisenhower - he is Tricky Dicky of the first magnitude. His entire record is one of opportunism. I cannot feel that there is the remotest sincerity in him, and that clearly he would be the tool of the highest bidder, which is always 'big business.

  Marguerite Rawalt

  Would Be, Tools, Records

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• A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Expression, Leader, Political

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• What is evil? What is - where does the evil come from that lies behind someone like Saddam Hussein, or Radovan Karadzic, or General Claude Raymond in Haiti. As I say, I've tended to find these people - I mean, Saddam, I've never met or interviewed - but these other people to be rather disappointing. Their political goals were mundane. What they had working for them was opportunism, was very often cleverness and was ruthlessness.

  Mark Danner

  Lying, Mean, Goal

  Source: www.pbs.org

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