Adam McKay Quotes

My mom was on welfare and the occasional food stamp, but I have never participated in any of those governmental programs, even the ones that kind of work like education, scholarships and whatever, and I managed to do just fine.

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.

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time.

I have met hundreds of young people doing just what George Romney did: using a hand up in tough times to become part of the American Dream.

When you are poor, you'll have to think of ways to be better off.

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

Community colleges provide higher education where people live, helping to build strong ladders of opportunity that allow people to secure a foothold in the middle class.

The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They are fast learning that there is an almost infinite world of industry opening before them, by which they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness and ignorance to competence and intelligence..

These institutions are generally more skilled at getting rich off those living in the lower economic reaches than they are in preparing them for the job market.

If we could figure out ways for kids to exit college without having the burden of debt, what we have really figured out is how to create a more fertile breeding ground for people who can think innovatively and progress us as a species.

I broke the cycle of poverty thanks to education.

Low rents mean families have more resources to improve their quality of life and invest in the next generation, facilitating upward mobility.

We need more good jobs, and that means we've got to start educating young people, starting literally in the first five years of life making sure that every kid in every zip code has good teachers and good schools, making college affordable, helping people pay down their debt.

As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.

Look at the growing middle class in India. Small businesses are not just a source of jobs and prosperity: they are the driving force of social justice too.

Hispanics don't want more programs to make them comfortable in their poverty. What Hispanics really want is more opportunity: the freedom to work, leave poverty behind, and rise into the ranks of the middle class and beyond.

From capitalizing housing trust funds, which allow low-income people to obtain grants to fix up and stay in their homes, to creating job training programs in schools, these are the kinds of economic stimuli that will give families the opportunity to thrive.

All too often affordable housing can be a block on mobility and aspiration, so instead Conservatives will ensure that living in social accommodation means that you'll get a 'freedom pass' to get on and do more with your life.

You know the AME Church has a history of empowering black people and having an international outlook. So it was the women of the church who began to give Sarah Breedlove an image of herself as something other than an illiterate washerwoman, and she wanted to make her life better, and her daughter's life better.

My graduation was an amazing moment for my family, my community. In my early childhood, we lived on a subsidized income, with government assistance - at one point when I was growing up, my mother was making $14,000 a year. Now I had made it out of the hood, so to speak.

My dad's side of the family was very poor while growing up, but my dadi raised three kids, got my dad through medical school, sent my uncle to America where he wanted to work and helped my aunt become an accountant, because that's what she wanted to do.

School was always a major player in my personal journey. It allowed me to open up to the world, and also social mobility. It allowed me to enrich myself, to read, learn and understand.

You are not going to lift everybody out of poverty through the kindness of wealthy people.

We can and will make Chicago a place where your ZIP code doesn't determine your destiny.