Harvey Gantt Quotes

My parents came from a poor background and worked their way up because of education. They saw it as a way to succeed. So they cared about me getting straight A grades when I was growing up.

I got married at 19 and graduated from a commuter college in Texas that cost $50 a semester. The way I see it, I'm a janitor's daughter who became a public school teacher, a professor, and a United States Senator. America is truly a country of opportunity!

My parents came from lower-class British backgrounds. But they worked hard and, without formal education, made it where they are today.

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time.

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

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

When my parents met, my mother was a waitress and my father was a dockyard worker. They were part of that post-war better-yourself generation, so they both went to night school.

They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn't inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better - the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.

The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.

My 'act' was schoolwork. I was your basic, garden-variety, ambitious, upwardly mobile, hard-working Jewish boy from Brooklyn. I was bound to go beyond my parents. It was simply the way things were.

The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

Slowly but surely the old establishment is being replaced by a new, larger, more meritocratic middle class—a middle class that will include millions of people who traditionally may see themselves as working class but whose ambitions are far broader than their parents and grandparents.

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?

I had come to college believing in a story that if you worked hard, the American dream was reachable.

The American Dream is simple: it's the unwavering belief that anybody - you, me, your friends, your neighbors, grandma Verna - can become exceedingly successful, and all it takes is the right amount of work, ingenuity, and determination.

The mantra I grew up with was that no matter where you came from, hard work and education could set you free.

My parents climbed their way to the middle class.

Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.

The American dream means that you have the chance to work hard, get an education and do great things for yourself, for your kids. The great thing in American is it doesn't matter what your last name is, doesn't matter if you're wealthy.

Hard work and education will take you farther than any government program can ever promise.

I am proof that the American dream still exists.

I think that's still what the American Dream means: that with perseverance, with hard work, you can become something, that the classes won't prevent you from becoming, that there's a movement up that ladder with hard work.

One of the nicest things about receiving the accolade of Australia is that, previously, the knighthood was historically for what was termed 'the establishment.' Now, this is an accolade for somebody who comes from a working-class background. Someone whose father was a truck driver and decided to buy a truck.