Naveen Tewari Quotes

I grew up in a middle-class family. I went to law school.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go to college and have a career - as well as a family - of my own. Both my parents, but especially my mother, encouraged me and led me to believe that it was possible.

The usual channels of university studies or secretarial work did not appeal to me. I cherished difficult dreams through confidence in myself.

At 27 or so I thought, you know, I actually do really want to make money and have a proper life, and I don't want to be a loser. I know! I'll go to university and get a proper degree and maybe get a job in media... I went and did an English degree.

I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.

Today, families like the one I grew up in still believe in that American dream. But as President Obama says, it's a make-or-break moment for the middle class. Mitt Romney's plans would make things worse.

I'm all about supporting anyone whose art is also the way they make their living.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.

I don't have good business sense. You never get much money for the arts. But I like independence. I like to grow.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

I get a lot of girls who say, 'I just want to be a model so badly.' And I think: 'You can do better than that.' I mean, look, I do love it, I'm not saying anything bad about it, I just think you can do a lot more.

My best friend Jerry started a boat-washing business, and it was one of the most critical experiences of my life. I got to meet a lot of people who were entrepreneurs. My parents were schoolteachers, and I was now meeting people who owned companies. I realized that if this guy can do it, why can't I?

I think African Americans are resilient and hustlers by nature. I think they need to understand that you can take that hustle to the boardroom, but it has to be an education process.

I was not from a middle-class family at all. I did not have middle-class possessions and what have you. But I had middle-class parents who gave me what was needed to survive in society.

My son, Wolf, was born when I was past 40 and the author of a best-selling novel. That means he has grown up a middle-class child - one who sometimes asks me for stories of my childhood but knows nothing of what it means to grow up poor and afraid. I have worked to make sure of that.

Being in Loyola College exposed me to other options and gave me confidence, apart from the freedom to bunk classes. I became a merchandiser and then a garment manufacturer, and interacting with foreign buyers and manufacturing foreign brands in India gave me a high.

I wasn't supposed to be walking with Mark Zuckerberg. I wasn't supposed to be interviewing Romney's sons. Why was I doing it? Because I wanted to survive. I wanted to live. I wanted to earn what it means to be an American.

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

After I dropped out of college at the age of 19, I became a mortgage broker, and when I went back to school I thought about going into real estate law. I probably would have made a lot more money and died of boredom by now.

The United States is a country where practically everybody considers himself middle class.

I would have gone to law school, or gotten a psychology degree. I wasn't interested in sleeping on a futon forever. And what happened is I walked into auditions, and I had nothing to lose, because I had a backup plan.

We believe that the government has an important role to create the conditions that promote entrepreneurship, upward mobility, and individual responsibility.

To me, that's the role of government: not to give people a hand out, but a hand up... giving people the tools to pave their own way to success.

A thriving middle class is a necessary precondition for a free representative government.