Claude Picasso Quotes

The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

There's very few people - like Shakespeare - who, no matter what, were gonna do what they did. For the rest of us, there's a lot of events that have to happen in order for things to end up the way they are.

I'm not saying I'm something special. I might play a little better tennis than other people, but it is because I was given the chance, and not many people are.

You are only as great as the opportunities that are given to you.

I do still sit back and wonder when I'm in LA if this is all really true or is it all kid-on. But it's great. I always bear in mind that the right place and time have a huge deal to do with it, and there are hugely talented actors who haven't had that break.

I think there's a million talented people out there, it's just a matter of luck a lot of the time.

Ariana Grande is a billionaire before she's been an artist. You have to work to be able to appreciate what you have... what work did she ever have to do in her life?

Everyone has a talent. It's simply a question of good discipline, of the good fortune to have an education that meshes with that talent, and a lot of luck.

All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.

Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

I didn't have to struggle at all to get an agent and a publisher. Everything fell into my lap.

Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.

Writing has been handed to me on a plate.

I see a project, and I say I want to audition for it, and people let me audition for it. There's a lot to be grateful for.

I really feel very blessed, and I don't forget it, either; there's an awful lot of wonderful talent in this world, and I just seem to be in the right place at the right time.

I have a good idea of how lucky we are to be growing up in Canada.

I come from a family of artists.

I think I am talented - but I also think I'm very lucky.

I felt like there were so many talented people who should be getting what I have.

I got incredibly lucky, and you have to be if you want to be quite successful.

Both my parents were painters.

Dancers should realise that they are really lucky. Dancing is not a job. It's people who are chosen. And you must realise that you are chosen. Sometimes I see a performance that makes me really angry - I think, 'Those people are lucky, and they don't realise it.'