Steven Weinberg Quotes

I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today.

Fairness is not the end result, it's the opportunity. And everybody in America today has the opportunity to get ahead.

Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women.

Everyone must have a shot at the American Dream.

This is what America is about when it comes to understanding that it is equal opportunity versus equal achievement. Each and every one of us has the opportunity for greatness in this country.

The American dream, to me, means having the opportunity to achieve, because I don't think you should be guaranteed anything other than opportunity.

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life

In America, opportunity and equality are not a zero-sum game

Those words freedom and opportunity do not mean a license to climb upwards by pushing other people down.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

Barack knows the American Dream because he's lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we're from or what we look like or who we love.

America is a meritocracy.

Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.

I think this country is genuinely a meritocracy.

If there is a national, secular religion in the United States, it is the belief that America is the Land of Opportunity, that we are a meritocracy, that any kid, no matter who they are, or where they come from, can work hard and move up in the world: that their effort matters.

You know, you work hard but play by the rules, you can rise. You can do well. That's what we're taught. That's what we believe. That's what we think of as America. Problem is, there are just generations of people in this country who do not think that.

Everybody should have a chance to rise. That's our philosophy in Ohio and that's my philosophy for America.

[E]very man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential - unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.

Middle America believes in fair play, an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail.

Democrats believe in reigniting the American dream by removing barriers to success and building ladders of opportunity for all, so everyone can succeed.

Mr. Lincoln's elevation shows that in America every station in life may be honorable; that there is no barrier against the humblest; but that merit, wherever it exists, has the opportunity to be known.

I believe education is the great equalizer.