Bob Mortimer Quotes

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

I would say if we can select children who are not going to be severely disadvantaged, then we should do so, but I think it has to be done by voluntary choice.

In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.

A person should not have a second class life because he chose the wrong parents.

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.

I am all for everyone having a voice; I just don't think everyone has earned the microphone. And that's what the Internet has done.

But I have to say, in my 12 years as the dean of admissions at Yale Law School, there was a lot of legal behaviour that I saw that worried me and that clearly was allowing wealthier and privileged students to tilt the balance in their favour.

There's not enough opportunity, and I feel like you can't control where you're born or where you're brought up.

I firmly believe that talent and intelligence are universal, but resources and opportunities are not.

Students come away with a clear message about how admissions works: If you have money, connections or 'insider' knowledge, you have a leg up. It's hardly surprising that many students of modest or lower means decide it's not even worth playing.

I was taught from a very early age that I had to work twice as hard to get half as much. That was the world I grew up in - a very strong work ethic.

While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories.

I'm not exceptional. I didn't grow up with privilege.

There's a part of me that's trying to represent kids that don't necessarily have the same outlet that I have. I'm not looking towards a new demographic. I'm looking towards the demographic I came from.

I would never bring in a player to make a statement.

For decades now, Republicans and Democrats have shared the same mythology around the great American meritocracy. The only real difference was that republicans thought the American meritocracy was already perfect and Democrats believed it could be perfected if we just dealt with racism and sexism and other forms of bigotry.

One of the biggest ways to level the playing field is to give all young people the same context on what opportunities are out there. And that means touching on some of the questions that are a little taboo in society: How much money do you make? What are your stresses? What would you do differently if you could?

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

Some people prefer a world where we're all equally talented in everything. Whether you prefer that world or not, I don't think that world exists.

I would love to live in a world that is purely equal, where everyone has equal opportunities in every way. But that is not reality.

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

I don't feel like it's fair to the other players and I don't think it's the right way to do business to allow influence and position to dictate when you play a young man.

I never really grew up being political or Labour. It was just a realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered.

Even though I didn't have a lot of material things, I had the love and education and all together a lot of kids don't have the same chances, so the goal is to give some chances to the kids that don't have it.

If you exclude a group of people from the boardroom or the leadership ranks of a company, the company is not as good as it could be.