"Opportunist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... world, and it deserves study because it promises a better, a safer, and a fairer life to the masses. But as yet it is only a theory, a hypothesis. It has never been tried in toto.... It has succeeded only where it has allied itself with liberal and opportunist rather than radical policies."[4] ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... if never I came From my own fireside again! The way the "Thunderer" cuts me up Is vixenish—as vain. I was born an Opportunist, In a general sort of way, But it's really very impertinent For the Times to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... Builder, generous, human, alert, expansive, and full-blooded. Publicist, dry, thin-lipped, pedantic, opinionative, hard." That was what he, no doubt, expected of the cast. In a word, his attempt to fascinate lacked polish. It was clumsy, almost to the point of innocence, and opportunist to the point of weakness. He did not know how to take me, and was ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... ultimately be listened to—a conviction that never failed him during a lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in quarters where perhaps he would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that only showed some signs of being justified a few years before his death. Schopenhauer was no opportunist; he was not even conciliatory; he never hesitated to declare his own faith in himself, in his principles, in his philosophy; he did not ask to be listened to as a matter of courtesy but as a right—a right for which he would struggle, for which he fought, and which has in the course of time, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... also some element of taste involved,—and thus made his arguments more effective than if he had alienated his audiences by indiscriminate attacks on all the institutions of society. No one could justly accuse Frederick Douglass of cowardice or self-seeking; yet he was opportunist enough to sacrifice the immaterial for the essential, and to use the best means at hand to promote the ultimate object sought, although the means thus offered might not be the ideal instrument. It was ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... opportunist if you like, Miss Kin, my government will be stable, and Mars can negotiate with it." He was a lean, sharp-featured man with deep grooves in ...
— Mutineer • Robert J. Shea
... is my son," said he; "and what's between us is our own business. Now, as to Old Home Week, it'll be time enough to give up when we're licked." And, adroit opportunist that he was, he urged upon the meeting that they support the Health Bureau as the best hope of clearing ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Social reformer—and were I with my present knowledge still an ingenuous youth in the fulness of strength with my life before me I do not know that I would not be a Social reformer—I would profess myself a Social agnostic, and prosecute my mission by the methods of the opportunist. I would endeavor to direct the Social ax to the most obvious and obtrusive roots of the Social evil, and having removed them and watched the result, would then determine what to do next. Possibly I would endeavor to begin with the abolition of wills ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... statesmanship; and here it is abundantly clear that the social conditions of the day, the democratic current which runs with increasing spirit in political channels, is unfavourable to the development of individual genius. The prize falls to the sagacious opportunist; the statesman is less and less of a navigator, and more and more of a pilot, in times when popular feeling is conciliated and interpreted rather than inspired and guided. To be far-seeing and daring is a disadvantage; the most approved ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Rome were dominant, though their policy was inconsistent and opportunist. Probably the leading men, such as Crassus and the rising Gaius, Julius Caesar, stood aside from the wilder schemes, such as the Catilinarian conspiracies, but secretly fostered them. Catiline's projects were betrayed, and the illegal ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... having the Sovereign brought into disadvantageous comparison with the Sovereign's eldest son. Walpole approved of the Test Act no more than Hoadley did, although the spirit of his objection to it was far less positive and less exalted than that of Hoadley. But Walpole was, of course, an avowed Opportunist; he never professed or pretended to be anything better. There is nothing surprising in the fact that he regarded an act of justice to the Dissenters as merely a matter of public convenience, to be performed when it could be performed without disturbing anybody ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... point of view of a smart rustic who hasn't absorbed any city nonsense," observed Miles Berryman, seating himself comfortably in a chair and gazing about with great satisfaction. "I think, Ernie, that we must all agree that you are a very wide-awake opportunist." ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... sinister opportunist Shuiski back to Moscow to place Boris's son Feodor on the throne. But the reign of this lad of sixteen was very brief. Basmanov, who had gone back to the army, being now inspired by jealousy and fear of the ambitious Shuiski, went over at once to ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... received only 1s. 3d., this decision was hailed as an act of superior democratic equality. In reality, the Commune only ratified the former inequality between functionary and soldier, Government and governed. Coming from an Opportunist Chamber of Deputies, such a decision would have appeared admirable, but the Commune doomed her own revolutionary principles when she failed to ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... the Marquis were alive, he would understand. He was always an opportunist, the Marquis. 'Drink your wine,' he would say, 'drink your wine and break your glass. We may not have heads to drink it with tomorrow.' I am merely drinking the wine, Mademoiselle. He would not blame me. Besides, the Marquis ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... capacity and judgment as in his speeches, and a mingling of tact and dignity which proved the greatest fitness for the conduct of the gravest public affairs. As a statesman Mr. Webster was not an "opportunist," as it is the fashion to call those who live politically from day to day, dealing with each question as it arises, and exhibiting often the greatest skill and talent. Still less was he a statesman of the type of Charles Fox, who preached to the deaf ears of one generation great principles ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... speech. If he made it, business would support him for President. He made the speech; he declared for Government ownership of railroads. Business, roaring with pain, fell back into the Republican arms, and Bryan was defeated for President. No, Bryan is not an opportunist—not in things that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Frankly, I'm an opportunist; essentially, a practical sort of fellow. I have a great admiration for idealists, but a much greater admiration for results. For instance, I have seldom given my word, even though the matter is unimportant; ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... union movement grouped around the Cigar Makers' Union, was neither so purely American in its origin as the Knights of Labor nor so persistently idealistic. On the contrary, its first membership was foreign and its program, as we shall see, became before long primarily opportunist and "pragmatic." The training school for this opportunistic trade unionism was the socialist movement during the sixties and seventies, particularly the American branch of the International Workingmen's ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... day he took control the new dictator and his African party began to build up the Belderkan Army. For years he had preached a new Africa, united, free of white masters, the home of a vigorous and perfect Negro society. His critics called him a hypocritical racist, an opportunist using the desires of the African people to build ...
— The Green Beret • Thomas Edward Purdom
... than secretiveness in its reaction from the large rhetorical forms of revolutionary Socialism. There arose even a repudiation of "principles" of action, and a type of worker which proclaimed itself "Opportunist-Socialist." It was another instance of Socialism losing sight of itself, it was a process quite parallel at the other extreme with the self-contradiction of the Anarchist-Socialist. Socialism as distinguished from mere Liberalism, for example, is an organized plan for social ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... for the lifetime of this generation, and thereby to explain something of the fascination which his personality has exercised and still exercises over the men and women of his time. If his enemies, and they are many, say that I have idealized a wily old opportunist out of all recognition, I answer that to the majority of his fellow-subjects my portrait is not overdrawn. The real Gladstone may be other than this, but this is probably more like the Gladstone for whom the electors believe they ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... had twice offered to settle upon 49 degrees, which limit the rapid growth of our population in the region induced England in 1836 to accept. Whether Polk's blustering demand for "all Oregon," which came near bringing on war with England, and his much condemned recession later, were mere opportunist acts, is still a question. Many consider them pieces of a deep-laid policy by Polk to tole Mexico to war in hope of England's aid, then, suddenly pacifying England, to devour Mexico ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... it enunciates some plain and reasonable political principles, and makes an honest attempt to satisfy those who wished to help the Arcadians, but at the same time desired to regain ground against Thebes, it is not always convincing, and the tone is more frankly opportunist than is ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... were younger and more of an opportunist," Corson avowed. "In these guessing times among the booms, here is gas enough to inflate a pretty good-sized presidential balloon." ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... far from rendering him innocuous to the Opportunist party, brought him into Parliament[2] (as the French Chambers are now called) and increased his popularity. He had been already elected deputy both from the Department of the Aisne and the Department of the Dordogne,—the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... let us in the end ask ourselves, here and there at least, a man who is of real account in the world of affairs, and who is—not simply a luke-warm Platonic friend or an opportunist advocate—but an impassioned promoter of the woman's suffrage movement? One knows quite well that there is. But then one suspects —one perhaps discerns by "the spirit sense"—that this impassioned promoter of woman's suffrage is, ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... doubt this automatic and balanced theory of government suited admirably that distrust of the people which seems to have been a dominant feeling among the Fathers. For they were the conservatives of their day: between '76 and '89 they had gone the usual way of opportunist radicals. But had they written the Constitution in the fire of their youth, they might have made it more democratic,—I doubt whether they would have made it less mechanical. The rebellious spirit of Tom Paine expressed itself in logical formulae as inflexible to the pace of life as ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... antagonism between them, and also of Florio's intimacy and sympathy with Chapman and his friends. In later years, Chapman, Jonson, and Marston, however, seem to have recognised in Florio an unstable ally, and tacitly to have regarded him as a selfish and shifty opportunist. Florio appears to have used his intimacy with Southampton, and his knowledge of that nobleman's relations with Shakespeare and the "dark lady" in 1593 to 1594, to the poet's disadvantage, by imparting intelligence of the affair to Chapman and Roydon, the latter of whom ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Lord Palmerston had his own ideas and the courage of them. Within three weeks of the Russell Memorandum to the Cabinet he accordingly stood out in his true colours as a frank opportunist. The guiding rule of his foreign policy, he stated, was to promote and advance, as far as lay in his power, the interests of the country as opportunity served and as necessity arose. 'We have no everlasting union ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... into the vortex of political controversy as an aggressive radical. He was a vigorous and very persuasive orator; and in that capacity, as well as in that of writer of political articles and essays, was an uncompromising foe to the opportunist theories which he held to be degrading the public life of his country. The opposition he aroused by his fearless championship of whatever he considered a rightful cause was so bitter that he was eventually obliged to retire from Norway for two or three years. So much did this temporarily affect ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... laid upon his lack of statesmanship. His egotism and his fanaticism worked together to make him believe that the supremacy of the spiritual power which he aimed at might be attained by very secular devices. In action he showed himself a pure opportunist, approving at one time what he condemned at another. And yet he had so little of an eye for the line which separates the practicable from the ideal that at Canossa he humiliated Henry beyond all hope of reconciliation, and he died in exile ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... did nothing worse to her, and, for some reason, left the hotel without disturbing Brisson, whose room adjoined and who sat on the edge of his bed with an automatic in each hand—a dangerous opportunist awaiting events and calmly determined to do some recruiting for hell if ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... which consistency has an absolute merit. A man whose whole life is governed by moral principle has a constituency in the judgment of all honest people and may be said to represent mankind rather than a party. Even a cynical opportunist like Lord Beaconsfield had to confess, "So much more than the world imagines is done ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... he has borrowed money from me! He is a contemptible Bernard and opportunist, and he doesn't believe in God; ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... them services that cannot be repaid. Not, indeed, that he had any coherent plan in his mind's eye, or was guided by any deep-seated moral principles. Politics were for him the art of the possible enlarged by the negation of the ethical. Ferdinand may, therefore, be described as an opportunist, who in current politics contented himself with following his nose. Of treaties and conventions he had signed a goodly number and broken some. Thus with Russia he had a secret agreement of a military nature, and also with Russia's rival, Austria-Hungary. With Serbia he had one ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Socialism, it has aimed rather at securing the return of labour members to Parliament, and to local governing councils than at the conversion of the working class to a dogmatic social democracy. Often frankly opportunist and experimental, the Independent Labour Party and its offspring, the Labour Party in the House of Commons, have followed the national custom in politics of attacking and redressing evident evils, and have done ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton |
