Ben Carson Quotes

Kids from poor families might be nicer, the might be happier, they might be more polite---but in countless ways, the manner in which they are raised puts them at a disadvantage in the measures that count in contemporary American society.

I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.

We aspire to be equal opportunity, but all across the country where a student is born, their race, their class affect where they end up.

Who is affected more when it's cold? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's hot? Poor people. Who is affected more when it's wet? Poor people. Who is most affected when the economy is bad? Poor people. Poor people are the most fragile.

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

I think the class divide is going to change. I think a lot more working class people are going to get published. It is really class ridden, literature.

The subsistence level is only a conventional idea, and conventions change.

Poor children fare worse than rich children on just about everything that social scientists measure.

For income growth to occur in a society, a large fraction of people must experience changes in the possible lives they imagine for themselves and their children, and these new visions of possible futures must have enough force to lead them to change the way they behave.

This is what I think about poverty: why waste the potential of people? You never know what you've got going in society unless you give people a chance.

Everybody is not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. There are only a very small percentage of those types of people, you know what I mean?

I come from the ghetto in Brazil, where we don't have a lot of career opportunities, so I'm sure my family and people who live there never imagined that one day I'd become a singer and be able to perform at an event like the Olympics.

If you don't have money or you come from a background that doesn't have money, it's harder to achieve your ambition in life. It's not that you can't, but it becomes harder. Inequality is one of the worst things that can exist in our society, so I am interested in those kind of things.

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success.

There's a huge gulf between people who can afford to go to drama school and those who can't.

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

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Too many people feel that where you start out dictates where you should end up. I was on welfare and just shy of 19 when my first daughter was born, but I was encouraged to take advantage of my ability and drive and remained in school.

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.

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

If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

I didn't finish college; my parents didn't graduate college - we didn't have a pot to piss in. I'm from Newark, New Jersey. I had to work. I didn't think it would be possible for me to be an artist without having a job.

I'm aware that not all kids can pick up and fly to Panama. I'm very lucky.