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I firmly believe that success requires three components: ability, effort and opportunity. >
>And the most important of the 3 is effort.
I can't agree with you more. I hate to cite myself as an example but.. I am the least knowledgeable on this form and I have never been very good at learning technical stuff. I was not born with the silver spoon.. just the opposite.. throughout my childhood saw my father only in prison; and my mother - a factory worker - could only provide for very basic needs (an odd jewish family <g>). The opportunity I got was when I was able to come to the US; this was a big one. But the main thing is effort/grit. I am not in the proverbial 1% but happy to be where I am.
"The creative process is nothing but a series of crises." Isaac Bashevis Singer
"My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all." Oscar Wilde
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." W.Somerset Maugham