Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Our efforts must be bent in the direction of convincing the great mass of working people of this country of the necessity of our winning and retaining our place in business and commerce. That place can be won only through the workers' own efforts and through their own efficiency.

Most of the people we're depending on for our economic future will not graduate from college. It is time we empowered them instead of ignoring them.

I grew up with a bunch of factory workers.

Skills development as a means to income generation is the key to integrate vulnerable migrants into the mainstream of society and to equip them for an eventual return home.

I represent a blue-collar district: people who work at petrochemical plants and machine shops.

A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognizing the dignity of labour.

I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time.

I have received delegations of working men who, apparently speaking with the utmost sincerity, have declared that they would regard it as a genuine hardship if they were deprived of their beer, for example.

This whole notion of job training centers with the government in charge of making sure you know what to do when certain jobs are lost and new jobs come along? That's not how people have meaningful lives.

I think that it's not enough to do the little Band-Aid things of having celebrities come and read to children. Not that we don't need to read to children, but we don't need to just do it one time and feel good about it. I think we need to think long range about poor people and their relationship to libraries.

Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity.

I feel that I helped the working class by just saying there are no barriers, which I consider to be true.

I love bookstores. I love the energy in a bookstore and the smell of the paper.

Literacy could be the ladder out of poverty

I want to invest in hard-working families.

Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man.

There's a ton of stuff we can do to help the economy and help the American people, and the aspirational working class of the American people.

We've made a huge effort globally and in the US, in getting kids jobs. This is one piece. The South Bronx and inner-city schools need it more than most. It's our hometown; JPMorgan Chase banks a lot of people here. If you see the school, it works. Kids all getting jobs, they're smiling, they're proud of themselves. That's what we need to do in inner-city schools.

Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was. And if he saw that poor and working people were not at the center of public policy, he would be deeply, deeply upset.

I grew up in a steel town of Western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, and when I announced for president, I announced from the factory floor. When I talk about making America the number one manufacturer again in the world, it's not just talk. When I talk about having the opportunity for people to rise again, it's not just because it polls well.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

I think it's a real shame so many schools have taken out the hands-on classes. Art, music, auto mechanics, cooking, sewing, these are all things that can turn into jobs. You know, wood shop, steel shop, welding. These are all things that can turn into great careers, get kids interested. Things they can do with other students. Other things for our word thinkers: journalism clubs, drama clubs.

Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.

When was the last time you read a book? The truth now. And picture books don't count-I mean something with print in it.