Jane D. Hull Quotes

Growing up, I never imagined a girl from a border town could one day become a governor.

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman.

I might have been born in a hovel but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars.

As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, it is still possible to progress if not from a log cabin at least from obscurity to the White House. It is also rare.

I had a pursuit different from others because they all came from downtown areas with money, but I didn't have any. All I wanted is to change my destiny with my own efforts.

All I would say is it doesn't matter where you come from. Like, Jim Sheridan comes from the inner city, and he's one of the top ones, a top lad.

Only in America could a refugee girl from Central Europe become secretary of state.

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?

Barack Obama was not born into wealth or privilege, yet today his is president of these United States of America. Barack Obama has lived the American Dream. He has walked in our shoes.

My father came from nothing, so he believed that people could do anything if they worked hard enough. I think he liked that I chose to be an actor. Both he and my mom were totally supportive.

The main reason I wanted to be successful was to get out of the ghetto. My parents helped direct my path.

My father worked in a post office and never made probably more than $8,000 a year as an employee of the post office, so when people can rise up from very modest circumstances and do well economically, I think that's a good thing about America, and we should encourage that kind of activity.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

I grew up in a family that nearly lost everything, but I ended up in the United States Senate because I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me and built a real future for us.

Immigrants have always come into the country with low levels of education. Whether it's the Irish or Italian or Polish, here is the land of opportunity. It's where people come in at the bottom and build themselves up. To try to bring in people who have already made it is un-American.

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

I guess it proves that in America anyone can be President.

The American Dream

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 a Southerner and as a Mormon you approach life in this aspirational way: 'I will rise above my station.'

Only in a nation like ours could someone like me, the scrappy son of a simple carpenter, grow up to become a simple senator.

I came to America because this is a country defined by ladders of opportunity.

Both my parents are first-generation success stories.

I came here because I wanted to live the American dream that I had heard of. And I'm a perfect example. I came to New York; I knew no one. I've made a career, a life, so I still believe in that.