John Ridley Quotes

Just because my dad is Clint Eastwood doesn't mean I don't have to work for a living.

Ariana Grande is a billionaire before she's been an artist. You have to work to be able to appreciate what you have... what work did she ever have to do in her life?

The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn't admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn't just get a head start by being his father's son - it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life.

My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.

The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

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

There are people who are surprised at my politics and being a conservative and the rest of it. But the truth of the matter is, to my knowledge, I have never been overlooked or turned down for anything that I wanted to do that was being offered to me.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

By channeling my inner heiress, I created a new opportunity for young heiresses.

Status in itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.

When you're young and you have money, you become the CEO, automatically, of life, of your family.

What bothers me about the whole trust-fund thing is that it sort of presumes that everything is handed to you. And if there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking.

I am one of 40 grandchildren. What bothers me about the whole trust-fund thing is that it sort of presumes that everything is handed to you. And if there is one thing about my family that I do identify with, it is that everyone is extremely hardworking.

It is nobody's right to be waited on and nobody's fate to do the waiting.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

There's no Peter York Foundation, and you're no one without one.

For lots of people who became rich, they believe they earned their fortune through hard work. They don't think about society and only want to leave their fortune to their children.

For rich children, it'd be very easy and convenient never to take any steps to build an identity outside of your association with your family's wealth.

My last name may have opened doors, but I have to keep them open.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

If the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, He would have made them with mouths only and no hands.

If you were a Rockefeller, wouldn’t you be?.