Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Quotes

Everybody is not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. There are only a very small percentage of those types of people, you know what I mean?

The odds of being successful are the same for every group that is educated in America. It's just that the group that is not wealthy is 95 percent of the population. So if there are 100 successful people in a room, probably 95 out of 100 came from more modest means.

We're leaving the House to people who either were born with a silver spoon in their mouth... or couldn't get better jobs in the first place.

I don't come from a privileged background.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

The greatest issue before the people—the question of special privilege and unequal distribution of wealth.

Whatever we do, whatever our backgrounds, we've all had some kind of advantage somewhere along the way. Some break that might have gone to someone else. Some edge or inside track we couldn't have counted on.

There's a lot of freedom to do anything you want in Mexico. It's just that that freedom belongs to a few. It's a huge country with a big contrast. There is this big inequality, so those like us that have the chance to do things, we know we are very lucky.

The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.

I've been very lucky - I don't come from a privileged upbringing.

I think there's a certain sense of grounding that comes from not being a rich kid from a media-elite school.

I never thought of being disadvantaged.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.

When your work is nonfiction about low-income communities, pretty much anything that's not nonfiction about low-income communities feels like a guilty pleasure.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm from a very privileged background.

Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

There's great disparity between who goes to college and who goes to jail. Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools.

I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going.

There are opportunities that I have because I'm a white dude, and it's controversial because that's just the way that the world we live in kind of is.

I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it's difficult for 'poor people' - poor white people, brown people - to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are.