Social Mobility Quotes

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

For thousands of years, until about 1850, you see humans accumulating more and more power by the invention of new technologies and by new systems of organization in the economy and in politics, but you don't see any real improvement in the well-being of the average person.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

As far back as 1969, black males who came from homes where there were newspapers, magazines, and library cards had the same incomes as whites from similar homes and with the same number of years of schooling. In the 1970s, black husband-and-wife families outside the South earned as much as white husband-and-wife families outside the South. By 1981, for the country as a whole, black husband-and-wife families where both were college educated and both working earned slightly more than white families of the same description.

Every Man A King

Families are always rising and falling in America.

The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

In England, the class system is about a thousand years old, and it's not going to change any time soon.

My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.

Public education is the great equalizer of America.

Individualism and Socialism

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.

In today's world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they're cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

I don’t deny that Cuba poverty exists, but at least the peasants there have an illusion of progress, whereas the Bolivian lives without hope.

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.

Barack Obama was elected during my second year of college, and save for his skin color, he had much in common with Bill Clinton: Despite an unstable life with a single mother, aided by two loving grandparents, he had made in his adulthood a family life that seemed to embody my sense of the American ideal.

If you want to be President, you'll have to remain poor.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common .... there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens ... they will not make much more progress.

I grew up in a working class family. People thought I might go work at a mill. My mom wanted me to learn how to lay carpet because she was concerned about my future. Nobody had high hopes for me. But I was a hustler.

One of the things I most admire about America is they have created a genuine melting pot society, a country of opportunity; you can be of any religion, colour, ethnicity, persuasion and make it to the top of your chosen field. And that's something I admire about America and hope they continue with.