Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.

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.

[William Jennings Bryan was] a poor clod, a peasant come home to the barnyard, motivated solely by the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes.

I want to have a catalogue or a share in a company. I'm trying to take my family's name from lower-middle class to aristocracy. I have my sights set high.

People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.

That's one thing you Americans take for granted, you know? That you can grow up, you know, not so good circumstances, and you can move. Just because you are born in rural Arkansas, whatever, that doesn't define who you are.

Both my parents are lawyers. They come from humble beginnings.

My parents climbed their way to the middle class.

I think that I represent people that sometimes don't have a voice because of how they grew up or where they grew up or the options that were given to them. I was able to kick my way out of that, but we have a real class problem in this country, where it's hard to jump classes.

I have a humble background. My dad was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the first people in my family to go to university.

The thing is with boxers we don't come from Cambridge and places like that, we come from council estates. So in boxing it's very, very hard.

I had a pursuit different from others because they all came from downtown areas with money, but I didn't have any. All I wanted is to change my destiny with my own efforts.

I think Ant and I were ambitious because of where we come from. Both of us are from working-class families on council estates in Newcastle.

All I would say is it doesn't matter where you come from. Like, Jim Sheridan comes from the inner city, and he's one of the top ones, a top lad.

One arises from a low to a high station more often by using fraud instead of force.

Most people who are rich chose their parents wisely.

My mom was a pretty hard worker. She worked her ass off, but I'd say we were middle class. I had a car in high school, so I loved the idea that I could mimic this lifestyle.

The United States is probably the most [socially] mobile society in the history of the world. The virtues that are most valuable in it are diligence, discipline, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. Education and credentials are most important in government; elsewhere most skills are learned on the job.

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.

We want to rescue the American dream.

I know our policies work best to lift young men and women up - regardless of their background - so that they can choose their own path and live lives of dignity, purpose, and meaning.

70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

[The Americans] believe in the idea that a child shouldn't be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth.

All the kids that I grew up with, in an almost idyllic environment - I've got to tell you, it was so wonderful - they've gone on and they're doctors and Ph.D.'s and everybody has a four-year college degree. None of our parents, I think, had a four-year degree.