Clive Davis Quotes

My earliest memories are of my father explaining to me the American Dream and how he expected me to do better than he did.

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.

John Edwards comes from working folk, just like me. John Edwards worked hard and excelled to get his education, just like me.

My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer's daughter, was to shape my entire life.

I watched my parents go from having very basic jobs to educating themselves, to buying a house. They set a really good bar for what they wanted their kids to achieve.

Thanks to my mother's sacrifices, I was able to attend one of the best schools in Chicago.

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.

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

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

My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.

My parents pushed us very hard to work, both in the home, doing chores and cooking, and at school.

Hard work and a good education will take you further than any government program.

If I was freer than I had ever been in my life, I was not yet entirely free, for I still hung on to an idea that had been set deep in me by all my schooling so far: I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself... something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.

I never wanted for anything. We went to Ireland for holidays every year. I was 14 when we first went to Italy. My mum was determined I was going to go to a good school. My mum was an absolute grafter. A real grafter. I got my work ethic from her.

However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

From an early age I was told that I was expected to do more than continue to run a small business. Education was important and seen as a way of moving forward.

I got my degree. More importantly, I got a key to American opportunity. That's who we are - a nation that rewards ambition with opportunity. Where hard work can lead to success, no matter where you start.

Your work is first, learning is first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

I don't want to bust my butt for the rest of my life, like my parents.

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.

Obviously, personal responsibility is important. But there's no evidence that people who are poor are less ambitious than anyone else. In fact, many work long hours at backbreaking jobs.

I'm self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person, because I was not educated. But that was my dream - to have class.

Education is very important to my parents and to me.

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

The Scholastic Aptitude Tests do not predict success any better than the socio economic status of the parents.