Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

There's not enough opportunity, and I feel like you can't control where you're born or where you're brought up.

I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner.

I know what it's like to access the privilege of a ZIP Code but also be born in one that could have destined me to something else.

My adopted parents were able to pay for me to go to a private school. So I had it better than most people.

I'm very lucky I went to a nice school and I live in a very lovely part of London.

It's only when you get towards the top that people start throwing you down a rope. It's like a law of nature, and it makes me think a lot about what my responsibility is to folks who are further down the hole where I was - how I can offer them help and how I can try to help change the structure of American society.

Nobody chooses where they're born. And, of course, I would know.

My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.

A girl born in Drumchapel in Glasgow has just as much right to good health and the opportunities provided by a good education as a Surrey stockbroker's son.

My parents weren't cultured people.

The first thing to do is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.

People don't rise from nothing.

The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.

When you’re a housekeeper’s daughter, you see the world through a half-open door.

We, as Americans, have won the lottery of life and the distinction between us and people living in Kalighat is not that we are smarter, not that we're harder working, not that we're more virtuous - it's that we're luckier.

One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

Maybe when you were born on the top of the mountain you could pretend the mountain didn't matter, but those who climbed it and those born at its base who could never climb at all knew differently.

Luck cannot change birth.

Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all.

I have a 10 year old at home, and she is always saying, 'That's not fair.' When she says that, I say, "Honey, you're cute; that's not fair. Your family is pretty well off; that's not fair. You were born in America; that's not fair. Honey, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you.

Different people are afforded different opportunities. I've been given some awesome opportunities, and I feel that I've always knocked them out of the park. But I've always been scaled back after that.

I don't think the world works on merit.

No matter where you're born in life or what the circumstances are when you're born, like your parents being poor or not connected to power, you have a chance in this country to go as far as your talent and your work will take you.