Hiram Wesley Evans Quotes

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.

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.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.

The economic and technical capabilities of the established societies are sufficiently vast to allow for adjustments and concessions to the underdog.

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

We know what works. What works are the very opportunities that advantaged families provide for their children.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others”, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through the those gates.

That certain groups do much better in America than others—as measured by income, occupational status, test scores and so on – is difficult to talk about.

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?

The world is not a meritocracy, as much as we may like to pretend that it is. And we have a long way to go before we really reward people based on their own merit.

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

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.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

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

Republicans many times can't get the words 'equality of opportunity' out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing.

I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

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.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.

There's a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation, which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire to question or challenge or do anything significant. Those are the types of people who become partners at the corporate law firms.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.