James Fox Quotes

I wasn't born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.

I don't know that I ever bought into the "American dream." I was a child of privilege. I grew up in the '50s and it was a quiet time in America, at least on the surface and I grew up in a kind of feathery bed of privilege.

The rich man has his motorcar, His country and his town estate, He smokes a fifty-cent cigar And jeers at Fate. He frivols through the livelong day, He knows not Poverty, her pinch. His lot seems light, his heart seems gay; He has a cinch. Yet though my lamp burns low and dim, Though I must slave for livelihood- Think you that I would change with him? You bet I would!

I was not born into a rich family or a family of government officials.

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.

Aspiration, it seems, is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy.

What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.

You can't tell a millionaire's son from a billionaire's.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm from a very privileged background.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

I would say I came from upper middle class family.

I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

I've always been interested in this idea of a privileged life, probably because it's something I hadn't seen much of.

Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one.

My parents didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up. We were comfortable, but I didn't go to Oxbridge, and yet every American interviewer I get says to me, 'You're related to Charles II! Your grandfather was a baronet!' And it's infuriating, because that is a part of my history, but you're trying to turn me into a posh boy, and I'm not.

I'm the son of a former billionaire, but I'm just a working man.

It seems to me that most people are interested in reading about characters who are richer than they are.

I'm tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live.

The level of real income is not what determines whether they are happy or not. It’s their relative place in the pecking order.

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

I don't think of anyone as rich or poor.

The beauty of not growing up middle class is that you don't think like the middle class. You don't have anything to protect, you know what I mean?

I grew up upper middle class.

I grew up in the middle class.