John Major Quotes

Public education is a great instrument of social change. Through it, if we so desire, we can make our country more nearly a democracy without classes. To do so will require the efforts of us all-teachers, administrators, taxpayers and statesmen. Education is a social process, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today.

I am for lifting everyone off the social bottom. In fact, I am for doing away with the social bottom altogether.

We need to find ways to elevate the expectations, particularly of those individuals who may start off on a lower socioeconomic rung, who might be seen as disadvantaged. But, you know, the reason I say be seen as disadvantaged, it's because life is so short, and there's so much that can change.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

We are like a woman with a difficult pregnancy. We have to rebuild the social classes in Egypt, and we must change the way things were.

If education does not create a need for the best in life, then we are stuck in an undemocratic, rigid caste society.

The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

We believe that a society in turmoil cannot be saved through mere legislation.

Our goal is a classless society.

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

Conservatives tend to prefer stability even if it leads to inequality, and liberals tend to prefer equality even if it requires change.

Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution.

I am a socialist; of course I am a socialist. To hold a vision that society can be fundamentally different, to believe that all people can be equal - that is not a new idea.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.

I am absolutely convinced that race relations on the whole are actually better now than they were 20 years [ago].

I think that we must face the fact that in reality, you cannot have economic and political equality without having some form of social equality. I think this is inevitable.

For instance, our country wanted to effect a revolution, and did effect it, and now we are building a new classless society.

In all societies that have applied a form of socialism, a certain degree of social economic equality has been achieved.

Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.