Opportunity Inequality Quotes

I don't know many artists who've come out of Beverly Hills, y'know? You need that struggle.

The greatest crime of welfare isn't that it's a waste of money, but that it's a waste of people.

If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner.

70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

My one wish for humanity is that everyone can become the person they were meant to be - what are the barriers to that? Often it's crushing poverty or certain circumstances.

Social class has worked for years. Born into the right family, go to the right schools, even if you're not super bright to start with, you'll turn out bright. You go to the right university, you get the right job, you have the right connections, you'll make it to the top. Job done, very efficient.

When you have a policy of making sure that African Americans cannot build wealth, of plundering African American communities of wealth, giving opportunities to other people, it's only right that you might want to, you know, pay that back.

It's important to remember that innovators in business don't always get a platform.

When you're first starting out, you want to keep making good movies. When you're young and you're black, you do a bad movie and you're through.

Not every American belongs to the cognitive elite. Not every American is equipped by nature or nurture to accelerate into a Third Wave Information Age.

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

During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadershipin industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?

It's more like the inner workings of John Bender. He feels like he's been given a short shrift, he's not been provided the opportunities that maybe these other kids have. So he feels like he begins in a hole. And instead of trying to raise himself up, he wants to bring all of them down. That's a dynamic that's pretty universal. And so that was the real foothold on that. It wasn't like, "Oh, my high school experience is like John Bender's [in St. Elmo's Fire]."

I think that if there can be considered racism it's to do with the lack of opportunities for writers and producers and the people behind the camera.

I think people always want to hear that there are barriers that exist for us. But the more I started to realize artists that are kind of like me in my lane, like, if they were white or African-American, they often had trouble because it wasn't the quality of their music: they just didn't stick out.

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.

Black men of our day were never told, The sky's the limit. ... We could aspire to Joe Louis but never Henry Ford.

I am not an economic determinist. If I were, I would throw up my hands; I just would not bother. I think it's wrong to be an economic determinist. I think it's wrong to simply say, "Well, inevitably, if you're poor, you're going to get a lousy education; if you're lower-middle class, the cards are going to be stacked against you, and you'll probably never get anywhere".

All one needs to do is just to go to any hospital in America and see the number of Pakistani or Indian or Lebanese, or Syrian, or Egyptian doctors, who are either first generation or themselves immigrants, to know, and I'm a big believer - brains are distributed evenly around the world. What aren't distributed evenly are opportunities, stable government, educational institutions, etc.

I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.

We all have choices. (Astrid) No we don’t, princess. Only people with money and influence have choices. For the rest of us, basic necessity dictates what we have to do to survive. (Zarek)

Less than one percent of U.S. college students attend Ivy League schools, and these students don't necessarily reflect the world's brightest and most capable thought leaders but, rather, the people who've been afforded the most opportunities to succeed.

Why is life so difficult for some people and not for others? Why do some people have to struggle so much?

All over America there is to be found a large and growing class of earnest, intelligent, progressive colored women . . . many of them warped and cramped for lack of opportunity, not only to do more but to be more.

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.