Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Misguided liberal Joseph Stiglitz.Columbia University professor and Nobel Prize winner, claims the American dream is dead.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

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.

People naturally long for a bit of the wealth that is whorling all around them, and if the work and education available to them won't get them closer to the comforts that they see others enjoying, the temptation to take shortcuts can be fierce.

If you are poor today, you will always be poor. Only the rich now acquire riches.

Where else can a guy like me make it? Blind and poor---only in America.

Huge inequality gaps in a democratic society will tend to erode the respect for and security of doctrines of private property. The large majority must either own property or have reasonable prospects of attaining property if they are to support and maintain private property laws and traditions.

You’re twice as likely to realize the American Dream if you’re growing up in Canada rather than the U.S.

The percentage of American 30-year-olds in 1970 who were earning more than their parents had earned at 30? Ninety-two percent. Isn’t that amazing? That, in a nutshell, is what we call the American Dream. And what’s the percentage now? It’s somewhere around 50 percent

As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.

The anger from Occupy Wall Street is coming from this simple fact: America no longer seems to be a place where you can work your way up, from rags to riches, from lower class to middle class to upper class.

The truth is that I've always been fascinated with wealth in America. To me, it's been about the American dream and the corruption of that dream.

The erosion of equal opportunity is among the greatest threats to our exceptionalism as a nation. But it also provides us with an exciting and historic opportunity: to help more people than ever achieve the American Dream.

I've lived the American Dream, but, sadly, for too many, the American Dream is fading.

America has tolerated inequality because people think they can get ahead. If you have immobility on top of inequality, then people are not going to be happy campers. If you're stuck on the bottom and there just isn't much churning in society and you're stuck there through your adulthood, that's not a nice life to look forward to.

America is among the countries the advance countries with the least equality of opportunity, which means that the - while I prospects of young American, a more dependent on the income and education's parents (ph) than another - other countries. So this notion of equal opportunity is sort of American dream is, is now a myth.

I am but a generation removed from poverty and despair. Where would I be today if there had never been an America? What kind of lives or future would my children have if this was not a land of opportunity?

What I have been talking about for many years is opportunity conservatism, that every policy should focus like a laser on easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

The American dream is dead for the majority of America.

The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.

France has the least social mobility of any developed country. The social elevator no longer works. It's broken.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don't accept is the idea that some folks won't even get a chance.