Opportunism Quotes

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

  Milton Friedman

  Opportunity, Men, Another Man

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• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Scratch an altruist and watch a hypocrite bleed.

  Michael Ghiselin

  Hypocrite, Watches, Scratches

  7 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

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• 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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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

  3 Copy quote

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

  Tony Blair

  Errors, Democrat, Unified

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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

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• 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

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• Disraeli was now at the height of his fame and popularity. He still had his enemies... But the people as a whole now admired and respected him deeply... His unscrupulous past and cynical opportunism were being largely forgotten or forgiven. He was gradually becoming recognized not only as the prophet of a new Conservatism, at once compassionate at home and positive abroad, but as a great statesmen whom the Queen did well to honour. Power had brought responsibility. By 1878 the transformation in public attitudes towards Disraeli was complete.

  Christopher Hibbert

  Queens, Attitude, Responsibility

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• 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

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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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• 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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• 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

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• There's been a certain amount of opportunism in the wake of the Paris attacks in 2015, when there was almost a reflexive assumption that, "Oh, if only we didn't have strong encryption out there, these attacks could have been prevented." But, as more evidence has come out - and we don't know all the facts yet - we're seeing very little to support the idea that the Paris attackers were making any kind of use of encryption.

  Matt Blaze

  Strong, Ideas, Paris

  Source: www.politico.com

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• It's true that in Cuba there are double standards, there's opportunism, and there is a lack of freedom in some ways.

  Fernando Perez

  Cuba, Double Standard, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• There are no rules or formulas for success. You just have to live it and do it. knowing this gives us enormous freedom to experiment toward what we want. Believe me, it's a crazy, complicated journey. It's trial and error. It's opportunism. It's quite literally, "Let's try lots of this stuff and see how it works."

  Anita Roddick

  Crazy, Believe, Journey

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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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• Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

  Joycelyn Elders

  Men, Judging, Used

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• A pious woman's neighbor, a philanthropist's child, a liberal's servant--these three have a hard life.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Children, Hypocrisy, Hard Life

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• I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Differences, Doe, World

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