As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
Robert ReichRead
Obviously, personal responsibility is important. But there's no evidence that people who are poor are less ambitious than anyone else. In fact, many work long hours at backbreaking jobs.
Interpretation
Personal responsibility is crucial, but poverty does not equate to a lack of ambition.
This quote by Robert Reich emphasizes the importance of recognizing that ambition is not determined by one's financial status. It points out that many impoverished individuals work exceptionally hard in difficult conditions, challenging the stereotype that poverty is a result of laziness or lack of effort.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of socioeconomic status on ambition, this quote can serve as a powerful reminder.
As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
What 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.
Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.
What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.
But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That's what I strive to do, that's what I pray to do every day.
With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life.
A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.