Ellen Page Quotes

I'm ashamed to say that I'm from a very privileged background.

I am afraid of privilege, of ease, of entitlement.

I realize I am very privileged. But there's a difference between being spoiled and privileged.

If you're the person whose problems were solved when you were born, your job is to try and help the people who aren't in that situation. It's very easy to say you're tired of political discussion when all of your problems are solved. I keep trying to think of it that way.

Racial bias does exist, and until we can all admit its existence and become introspective as to whether our own personal biases are impacting how we deal with others, there will be no change.

I've actually spent about half of my life overseas in the third world. I grew up in Tanzania, East Africa, and later lived in South-West Asia. In general, everywhere I go, I am treated with great respect and hospitality, but I need to be sensitive to cultural, tribal and ethical customs of the local people. In this modern era of technology, I think we forget that the most important thing when traveling is to listen and learn, and establish relationship, and not be hidden behind technology like Goretex, emails, satellite phones, and insulated from the people around you.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot of people who live below the poverty level and have for a long time and it makes them uneasy to think they'll have to interact with people from different economic levels. Everyone has some sort of load put on them, whatever the circumstances they're born into.

It's not that I'm a very good person. It's that I think I should at least look at the ways in which I am not a good person, the ways in which I so readily become the person who would not notice that the wonderful clothing I'm wearing someone is probably dying for.

I don't mind the job of saying to white people, "Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing." And it's my job to educate white folks every day.

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

Today, you have 20 percent of the world controlling 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; you've got a $30 trillion (US) world economy, and $24 trillion of it is in the developed countries... These inequities can't exist. So if you are talking about systemic breakdown, I think you have to look in terms of social breakdown.

We often hear a lot about subsidies, because it's often the powerful talking about the poor; the poor don't have enough voice to question the privileges.

Only the poor are handicapped by honor.

Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.

Suffering is above, not below. And everyone thinks that suffering is below. And everyone wants to rise.

Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches.

I don't get my bliss by listening over and over to people in the street thinking, "Boy, is it that good?" Even though every time I hear it that's what I think. But I get it in human situations. There is this little voice that is going, "The reason you're able to enjoy your life now is that you made it in rock'n'roll and people are giving you free visas all over the place. Dude, you are being spoiled".

I think having a good life prompts it... anybody who has a good life and looks around them sees the enormous disparity that exists in the world between those people who do and those that don't. I can't say we walk about our guilt a lot, though. If we do, it probably comes out in the form of self-loathing jokes. But it's a tough thing to wrap your head around... the have's and have not's in the world.

There is no such thing as a really rich victim.

Traveling teaches us that we're all the same. Some of us just encounter more opportunities.

Privileged people don't march and protest; their world is safe and clean and governed by laws designed to keep them happy.

Privilege (to the privileged) means having private laws.

Only by becoming poor ourselves, by stripping away our complacency, will we be able to identify with the least of our brothers and sisters.

I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all.