Ayanna Pressley Quotes

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

Elites always tell poor people, “Work hard and play by the rules.”

I think it's disingenuous to believe that being born into a privileged world means you feel like you are having an easy time.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together.

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

There are a lot of people who were born into immense privilege who pretend that they weren't.

Of course, I have privileges that others don't. But, you don't choose where you are born. If you want to hate me for that, I am sorry.

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

An elite has prospered with our kinds of institutions, but the same cannot be said of the masses.

I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

The one think I hate about rich people, is that they really think that they work harder than poor people.

There must be one, indeed, who is the last and lowest of the human species.

We are domesticated animals, revolving in a cage which we have built for ourselves - with its contentions, wranglings, its impossible political leaders, its gurus who exploit our self-conceit and their own with great refinement or rather crudely.

There's nothing like white trash at the White House.

Everybody wants to talk about black and white, when the situation is really about rich people against poor people.

The people who run the country have enormous influence over the culture, politics, and the economics of the country. And increasingly, they haven't a clue about how most of America lives. They have never experienced it.

Sometimes I leave an encounter or a conversation hoping that I didn't come off as above my raisin' - hoping that I didn't make somebody feel bad for not having as much as we're fortunate to have.

On the one hand, the rich look askance at our continuing poverty - on the other, they warn us against their own methods.

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

History and social sciences were my interests. I was always interested in knowing how societies get organized, why there is rich and poor divide, why there are classes. I was never apolitical. I think we are all political in a way. Politics decides our day-to-day life.

The privileged elites are part of the globalization moment that we live in.