Nina Easton Quotes

I don't think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.

I feel privileged that I've been able to get anywhere, with my quote-unquote limited mainstream appeal, given my race and subject matter. Of course, I always have my masters to fall back on.

The benefit of rich families putting their child through Harvard is always going to exist. But it's quite evident that there are 700 million peasants in China who are never going to go to Harvard.

I went to boarding school, and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

Girls like Diana Spencer, armed with nothing more than a guinea-pig-rearing certificate, proud to say in that old Sloane way that she was 'as thick as two short planks,' became the exception as girls from Benenden and Downe House started to fast-track towards the City and law, consultancy, media and the arts.

The innovators' spirit of America still exists. However, there is a narrative in America which goes like - you must go to MIT to get your calling card. Or you go to Harvard and then you drop out and then you've made it.

Where but in America could a European thinker convinced of the elite nature of genuine education produce pupils who would go on to make common cause with populist politicians?

The rich don’t want the poor to get ahead of them.

Our democracy may have an aristocracy of talent, as Jefferson said – which is fine – but we don’t want everyone else to be left out. Something like that seems to be happening, though.

I'm tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live.

This College system went into practice to draw a line of demarcation between the two classes of society—it separated the children of the rich from the children of the poor.

With the existence of the few rich Malays at least the poor can say that their fate is not entirely to serve rich non-Malays. From the point of view of racial ego, and this ego is still strong, the unseemly existence of Malay tycoons is essential.

Government posts are for sale, preventing some poor people with abilities from serving in those positions.

Our rich people are not an ethnic minority. A poor person in Tennessee or Arkansas can say, "I'm not wealthy, but maybe my son or my daughter can grow up to be Bill Gates, or Bill Clinton." That's absolutely not true in countries like Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Indonesia, or Bolivia, where the majority of the people look around and they say, "Everybody who's rich belongs to a different ethnic group.

Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.

Farmer! Yesterday you could only work the land. Today, under the republic you can become an agricultural engineer!

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

… adult education should be made available … so that our less privileged groups may be able to avail themselves of new openings which require more education than they possess.

Nowhere in the world is presented a government of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions.

Surrounded by the evidence of their success, the wealthy come to believe that they are fundamentally better than other Americans and that working people deserve their declining fortunes. They trumpet meritocracy while ensuring that their children enjoy crushing advantages from birth. They have unprecedented access to politicians and use it to push policies that swell their wealth while defunding institutions, such as public education, that sustain opportunities for less-fortunate Americans.

In England, there is this tradition of the upper classes going to very expensive drama schools and then going on having careers. I knew that wasn't an option for me. My mother would never have been able to afford that.

I've led a very privileged life. You know, I've gotten to choose the work I do, and I hope every job I've had has been a little bit about trying to push the ball forward, particularly for folks who may not have the same opportunities that I've had.

I was an anomaly because my father was a Harvard man, and he came from a family of poor people.

Private education can give you confidence, which is marvellous; a sense of entitlement isn't.