Jacob Weisberg Quotes

The American dream has now morphed into an expectation. And if it isn't provided, or if it doesn't happen, then people feel cheated.

Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.

Like so many American families, our families weren't asking for much. They didn't begrudge anyone else's success or care that others had much more than they did... in fact, they admired it.

It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.

What makes this country different is that we have a great middle class.

… a steady job with decent pay and health benefits, rising living standards, a home of your own, secure retirement, and the hope that your children would enjoy a better future.

In my experience, all Americans - Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between - want roughly the same thing: an assurance that if they work hard, they can create a better life for themselves and their families. They want to feel safe in their communities and secure in their future.

Every country has rich people. But only a few places have achieved a vibrant and stable middle class. And in the history of the world, none has been more vibrant and more stable than the American middle class.

The American middle class has always existed to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable: settled values with unsettled ones, social mobility with a sense of permanence.

There's no future in being poor.

One of the strengths of our nation has always been a strong middle class who could afford their own homes and send their children to school.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

By 2030, just a small percentage of the global population will live in poverty.

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.

America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don't get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

We need the middle class to feel more confident about its prospects and about its future. We need to cut down on this anxiety that sees some people succeeding and the majority struggling - having to make choices between paying for their kids' education or saving for their own retirement.

I'm hoping that the administration and other thought leaders will succeed eventually in bringing the country back to the older idea that the American dream is having a career, getting a job, and getting involved in it, and doing well. That was the core of the good life.

The American dream is under assault.

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

The middle class, one of the great achievements in history, is becoming more of a relic than a reality.

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.