Neil Kinnock Quotes

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.

Voting rights and free speech are of little value to those with neither the education nor economic clout to make them meaningful.

Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organization.

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

India’s great curse is caste; but English education has already proved a tremendous power in leveled the injurious distinctions of caste

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? … Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

Some will always be above others. Destroy the inequality today, and it will appear again tomorrow.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

… the term "equality" as applied in Mexico has a very restricted meaning in comparison with the meaning given it in other parts of the world. In Mexico it means that all persons, regardless of learning, preparation or ethics, are equally qualified for governmental positions.

...when I am told that my ploughmen are capable citizens, it seems to me ridiculous to say that educated women are not just as capable.

America just works better when more people have a chance to live their dreams

Resentment — that feeling when the modern promise of equality collides with massive disparities of power, education, status and property ownership.

I know there has long been a great frustration among the African Americans in Nevada over their belief that we have not adequately responded to their desires to become more educated and more productive citizens.

I believe that when people have an occupation that allows them to provide for their families, the social dimension of human nature will emerge instinctively and lead people to help and organize others less privileged.

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

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

If money, education, and honesty will not bring to me as much privilege, as much equality as they bring to any American citizen, then they are to me a curse, and not a blessing.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.

I've spent my career trying to help people without connections understand what's going on so that they have a chance of getting a fair shake from the connected and the powerful.

Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens. Education is not just for a privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right.