"As fast as each opportunity presents itself, use it! No matter how tiny an opportunity it may be, use it!"
About this Quote
Collier writes like a man who’s watched fortunes get made not by lightning bolts of genius, but by people who simply moved first. “As fast as each opportunity presents itself” is a tempo note: he’s not praising ambition in the abstract so much as reflex. The line insists that delay is the real enemy, because hesitation converts an “opportunity” into a story you tell later about why it wasn’t the right time.
The repetition of “use it!” is doing a lot of work. It’s not “consider it,” not “honor it,” not even “take it.” “Use” frames opportunity as a tool, something practical and almost impersonal. That choice fits a publisher’s worldview: Collier lived in an ecosystem of deadlines, distribution windows, attention spikes, and public moods. In media, timing isn’t a virtue; it’s infrastructure. Miss the slot and the content might be just as good, but it won’t land.
The second sentence anticipates the modern self-sabotage of waiting for the “big break.” “No matter how tiny” attacks perfectionism and status anxiety at once. Small openings are cast as training reps: they build the habit of action, they compound, they create proximity to larger openings, and they keep you in motion while other people are still negotiating with their fear of looking minor.
There’s a faint sales-era American optimism underneath it, but it’s a hard-nosed version: the world doesn’t grant meaning to your chances; you extract value from them quickly, before they evaporate.
The repetition of “use it!” is doing a lot of work. It’s not “consider it,” not “honor it,” not even “take it.” “Use” frames opportunity as a tool, something practical and almost impersonal. That choice fits a publisher’s worldview: Collier lived in an ecosystem of deadlines, distribution windows, attention spikes, and public moods. In media, timing isn’t a virtue; it’s infrastructure. Miss the slot and the content might be just as good, but it won’t land.
The second sentence anticipates the modern self-sabotage of waiting for the “big break.” “No matter how tiny” attacks perfectionism and status anxiety at once. Small openings are cast as training reps: they build the habit of action, they compound, they create proximity to larger openings, and they keep you in motion while other people are still negotiating with their fear of looking minor.
There’s a faint sales-era American optimism underneath it, but it’s a hard-nosed version: the world doesn’t grant meaning to your chances; you extract value from them quickly, before they evaporate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
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