Gordon Brown Quotes

Education is the great equalizer, and shouldn’t be limited to the wealthiest few.

People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.

The benefit of rich families putting their child through Harvard is always going to exist. But it's quite evident that there are 700 million peasants in China who are never going to go to Harvard.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

I care about education for everyone, not just the elite.

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.

The Tories and the Lib Dems talk about social mobility, but, short of winning the lottery, the only way to guarantee young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to do better and to raise aspirations is through education.

Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins.

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? … Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.

American computer science grads often have very little exposure to the human condition. They've rarely had manual labor or service jobs. They grow up in a bubble of privilege lulled into thinking this country is a true meritocracy.

All countries have poor people. Yet it's a very rare country which understands the indignities of poverty, while education systems maintain the status quo. The children of the elite go to the best schools and get the best jobs, not because they are the best. We're not taking advantage of the intellectual power on this planet.

The Margaret Thatchers of this country made it through - like I did - because of the grammar school system, which gave the opportunity of a lifetime to working-class kids. It put them on a level playing field with the privately educated kids, and opened up the top universities to them.

We remain a country where a young person's chance of fulfilling their potential rests on the vagaries of where they were born and what their parents do, rather than their innate talent and ambition.

No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

It cannot be Pakistan of Quaid and Iqbal where children of the elite study in prestigious educational institutions while those of resourceless segments deprived of education due to difficulties.

We must ensure that every single child can go as far as their ability and their aspirations will take them.

Working-class students more often lack the advice, guidance and support needed to navigate the tricky application process, whereas their wealthy peers at top public schools have admissions tutors to help their students game the system.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

The evidence shows that grammar schools overwhelmingly benefit those from more affluent backgrounds.

Our country was not built to support blood dynasties or to elevate the rich and famous to a higher ethical or constitutional plain.

I hated Duke, and I hated everything Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me.

I remember I used to go school with guys who couldn't afford notebooks, pens, paper: the necessary tools needed in order to survive in school. It's a lot of kids in Gary who are at a disadvantage without that.

You're not tapping into the widest possible pool of talent if you're shutting some people out of particular careers.