As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the need for working individuals to have opportunities for new beginnings while highlighting that established institutions require stability.
Robert Reich's quote suggests that average working people often face challenges that necessitate new beginnings or opportunities to improve their circumstances. In contrast, larger entities like corporations and influential figures like Donald Trump usually operate under conditions of stability, where fewer structural changes are favorable. This reflects a broader dialogue about economic inequality and the need for systemic reforms to give individuals more agency in their lives.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a motivational speech aimed at those looking to change their life circumstances.
More from Robert Reich
All quotes βWhat are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.
The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress.
You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
Similar quotes
To break our addiction to oil is one of the greatest challenges that our generation will have to master.
We get stuck in old thought and behavior patterns that may have been effective when we were twelve months or twelve years old, but now only serve to hold us back. And, while those around us may have no problem correcting our minor flaws, they let the big ones slide, because it would mean attacking who we are.
Everything is an experiment until it has a deadline. That gives it a destination, context, and a reason.
Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.
Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
Reorganization to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you're really fundamentally changing the way the organization thinks, the way it responds, the way it leads. It's a lot more than just playing with boxes.