Cornelia Parker Quotes

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law.

The thing is with boxers we don't come from Cambridge and places like that, we come from council estates. So in boxing it's very, very hard.

My dad's family were pretty working class, actually.

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

I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.

You can't kid the public. When they see me they see I'm just a kid off a council estate - no more, no less.

I think that's always something when you're working class, when you're aware of things that you haven't had; there are moments when you question yourself, definitely.

Growing up in Middlesbrough I was taught to be resilient and competitive. My teachers made us believe that just because kids were at private school up the road, it didn't mean they were better than us.

Working-class people don't tend to be wooed by celebrity.

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

Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorizing them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.

I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life.

I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.

I come from a working-class background in Queens, New York.

Class isn't something you buy. Look at you. You have a $500 suit on and you're still a lowlife.

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.

In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success and less inclined to condemn failure. The upshot is that it's much easier to be a failure in Britain than it is in America.

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

My parents didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. We were comfortable, but I didn't go to Oxbridge, and yet every American interviewer I get says to me, 'You're related to Charles II! Your grandfather was a baronet!' And it's infuriating, because that is a part of my history, but you're trying to turn me into a posh boy, and I'm not.

I'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled.

My dad grew up in a working-class Jewish neighbourhood, and I got a scholarship from my dad's union to go to college. I went there to get an education, not as an extension of privilege.

I still consider myself a working-class girl and would send my kids to public school.

I'm not posh, not in the slightest. My parents spent some money on my education, but I wasn't born to the purple.

I just thank God that I didn't grow up with so much money or privilege because you had to create ways to make it happen.

THE rich possess ample means to realize any theory they may chuse to adopt in the education of their children, regardless of the cost; but it is not so with him whose Subsistence is derived from industry.