Wendell Berry Quotes

I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university.

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

I think Ant and I were ambitious because of where we come from. Both of us are from working-class families on council estates in Newcastle.

One of the nicest things about receiving the accolade of Australia is that, previously, the knighthood was historically for what was termed 'the establishment.' Now, this is an accolade for somebody who comes from a working-class background. Someone whose father was a truck driver and decided to buy a truck.

John Edwards comes from working folk, just like me. John Edwards worked hard and excelled to get his education, just like me.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

Outside of the family, education is the greatest determinant of social mobility.

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer's daughter, was to shape my entire life.

Yes, look, social class is definitely an issue in Britain, it is definitely an issue and I think that most people across the country would sympathise with the idea that there are lots of people with talent and ability all across this country who want to make more of themselves and part of the responsibility of government is to make that happen.

Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.

My earliest memories are of my father explaining to me the American Dream and how he expected me to do better than he did.

I still consider myself working class. I know my circumstances have changed dramatically since I was growing up back in Birkenhead.

My 'act' was schoolwork. I was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were.

The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in Brooklyn. It's what gave me my drive to succeed, the upward mobility I've been after my whole life.

I am not posh. I went to a comprehensive school.

My parents came from a poor background and worked their way up because of education. They saw it as a way to succeed. So they cared about me getting straight A grades when I was growing up.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

Slowly but surely the old establishment is being replaced by a new, larger, more meritocratic middle class—a middle class that will include millions of people who traditionally may see themselves as working class but whose ambitions are far broader than their parents and grandparents.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

College education is the engine of social mobility in this country.

I was an anomaly because my father was a Harvard man, and he came from a family of poor people.

My parents came from working-class, small-peasant, farm-labourer backgrounds and had made the grade during the fascist years; my father came out of the army as a captain.