Chris Gardner Quotes

I was fortunate enough to make it to where I want to be. There could be other kids as talented or more talented than me in whatever they want to be but don't have the resources to pursue their dream. Maybe they have to get a job instead to help their mom with the bills.

When you come from an under-privileged background, oftentimes, you feel a little overwhelmed by your education or your lack of.

I'm from a working-class background - I had free school meals all my life and then spent six years in art school.

I wasn't a silver-spoon kid on the golf course growing up.

Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It’s a lack of resources.

A rising tide raises all boats, but you need a boat to rise with the tide. What does he who does not have a boat do?

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law.

Ninety percent of the people I grew up with didn't succeed.

The two big advantages I had at birth were to have been born wise and to have been born in poverty.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.

Rich and famous is not bad, but poor and famous sucks.

I didn't go to the right schools, didn't come from a well-known family, nor was I even remotely connected to a powerful publishing dynasty.

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

None of my friends were ever as broke as I was.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

Some men will be always able to pay more for their children's education than others; and that those children will, inevitably, win in the struggle of life.

You don't have to be impoverished to understand poverty.

You can be born into privilege, or you can not be born into privilege. You can be born into the opposite extreme and into poverty. I think from there on, though, you really do have to make your luck.

I did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth.

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.

You really have to prove yourself and prove your worth. I didn't come from family that had been here for generations and had all these connections.

Look, I'm not saying you can't make it if you grew up from a wealthy situation. I mean, a ton of people have.

We say success in America is about hard work and character. It's not really. Most of success today is about how good you are at certain tests and what kind of family background you have, with some exceptions sprinkled in to try and make it all seem fair.