Michael Moore Quotes

Other families who are poor do what they can to get out of it. My mother did not. She did not utilise her resources. She had a degree. There was something she could have done, but she actively, purposely refused that so we could have this absolutely authentic experience of the worst of capitalism: 'See? Look how bad capitalism is.'

As a young man, I saw families prosper without reading because there were always sufficient opportunities for willing workers who could follow simple instructions. This is no longer the case. Children who don't read are, in the main, destined for lesser lives. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to change this.

The Right insists that anyone can escape poverty by working hard but that is simply not the case.

It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth-grade education.

My parents came from lower-class British backgrounds. But they worked hard and, without formal education, made it where they are today.

I'm not really into politics, but if I had my own country, I would make sure all my people were educated and figuring out what they love to do, and focusing on that.

I think Ant and I were ambitious because of where we come from. Both of us are from working-class families on council estates in Newcastle.

In the free market, a man born into wealth or who has otherwise acquired great riches can lose his fortune depending on how he chooses to behave. Conversely, a man born into poverty or who has lost wealth once obtained can acquire a fortune, depending, again, on how he chooses to behave.

Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.

This country of ours, this system of ours, the rule of law, the opportunity to get an education and go as far as your hard work and ambition will take you, and we created the biggest engine of economic growth in the world, the American middle class.

For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.

No, Islam did not lift American blacks out of poverty; capitalism did that.

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years. Black thinkers as far back as Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington have done the same.

Why should I leave Ruleville, and why should I leave Mississippi? I go to the big city, and with the kind of education they give us in Mississippi, I got problems. I'd wind up in a soup line there.

My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the 'elite.' If so, I damned well earned it.

I was a poor kid. I came from nothing. We didn't have any money; a lot of times we didn't have any food, and now, all of a sudden, I'm a superhero in a Marvel movie? Talk about the American dream, man - I'm living it.

Middle class jobs prevent crime and violence.

Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development.

I was brought up a working-class Tory. I believe, to be a true socialist, you have to be a capitalist first. In my heart, I'm a socialist; in my mind, I'm a capitalist.

'Speechless' is first and foremost a show about a family that doesn't have a ton of money, but they move into a really crappy house in a really nice neighborhood so their kids can go to a nice school.

If you look at my life, I wasn't just poor; I was rich and poor.

I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life.

People have to recognise I'm a working-class lad. Forget what I've done and where I've been. I'm a working-class lad. I've come from nothing and I've not forgotten that.