I liked these thoughts from Warren Buffett on Bloomberg today:

WARREN BUFFETT: Well I came up with that a long, long time ago to describe the situation that – I was lucky. I was born in the United States. The odds were 30 or 40-to-1 against that. I had some lucky genes. I was born at the right time. If I’d been born thousands of years ago I’d be some animal’s lunch because I can’t run very fast or climb trees. So there’s so much chance in how we enter the world. And –
LIU: And you were always aware to make sure your children and their grandchildren, and your grandchildren would be grounded.
WARREN BUFFETT: Yes. And we’re not – how you came out of the womb has really nothing to do with what kind of person you are. You decide what kind of person you’re going to be. It does decide whether maybe you never have to do an item of work in your life and maybe determine whether you’re fighting uphill all of the time, but where in my life, in my eyes is we’re all created equal, and but we don’t all have an equal opportunity by a longshot. And my kids really work every day in trying to even up the scorecard.

Luck plays a big role in life. But you also get to choose how you’re going to use that luck and whether you want to try to make more of your own luck.

This post originally appeared at Pragmatic Capitalism. Copyright 2013.