Stay Open to Opportunity

Money doesn’t grow on trees, and if it did, someone else would own the orchard.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees, p. 19.

Most people do not realize that there’s just as much money to be made when a society is falling down as when it’s rising up.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 21.

The road to success is always under construction.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 28.

If you lined up all the economists in the world end-to-end, they still would not reach a conclusion.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 100.

The economy depends as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 120.

Opportunity knocks but once, while temptation leans on the doorbell.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 139.

Some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, in Ibid., p. 139.

There is hardly anything in the world that someone can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and people who consider price alone are this man’s lawful prey.
— Breck Speed & Mark Dutton, Ibid., p. 144.

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open….”
— George Carlin, fronticepiece, Braindroppings.

“No artist is pleased…. [There is no] satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
— Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille, from Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, in Ibid.