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5. Take Initiative and Get in the Game

Create Opportunities and Get in the Game

 Remember, true opportunity never knocks. I have found that I have to go looking for opportunity – and if I don’t find it, I have to create it.

– Sumner Redstone
Commencement Address at Kellogg Business School, 2002


 You don’t receive respect, you earn it and you aren’t given opportunity, you fight for it.

– Anthony Corvino
Student Commencement Remarks at Binghamton U. , 2009


 The message of the summoned life is that you don’t need to panic if you don’t yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.

-David Brooks
Commencement Speech at Rice University 2011


 Life will happen to you, whether you try to guide it or not, so you might as well try to influence the outcome. You have to know what you want and you have to be willing to go after it!

– David Cote
Commencement Speech at University of New Hampshire 2011


 Take action. Every story you’ve ever connected with, every leader you’ve ever admired, every puny little thing that you’ve ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life.

– Bradley Whitford
Commencement Speech at University of Wisconsin


 We might have the right intentions, but instead of acting, we decide to wait.. We keep waiting until we run out of “untils.” Then it is too late.

– Madeleine Albright
Commencement Speech at Wellesley College 2007