Quotes About Privilege

Aprendí que las virtudes más apreciadas por mis semejantes eran el rancio abolengo acompañado de riquezas. El hombre que poseía sólo una de estas cualidades podía ser respetado; pero si carecía de ambas se le consideraba, salvo raras excepciones, como a un vagabundo, un esclavo destinado a malgastar sus fuerzas en provecho de los pocos elegidos.

The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances. as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few!

Today, of Americans officially designated as 'poor', 99 per cent have electricity, running water, flush toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 per cent have a television, 88 per cent a telephone, 71 per cent a car and 70 per cent air conditioning. Cornelius Vanderbilt had none of these.

the rich are innately cleverer than the poor, which seems generally unlikely

Social class. Class remains our national awkward topic, usually mumbled over in academic diversity workshops; indeed, most people don't know how to talk about class without automatically coupling it with race. That's because we Americans are loath to recognize that the sky's-the-limit potential we take as our birthright comes at a price far beyond what many Americans--of any race--can afford to pay.

He silently gave thanks to the wealthy builders of this country pile who worked very hard to make sure they never had to see other people doing work.

The UK Home Office argued this was "in the public good" and that citizenship was "a privilege, not a right," even as it rendered these individuals stateless, leaving them without the recourse or oversight of any state's legal process or rules. As a security measure intended simply to block the return of European citizens who had fought in Syria, it worked. But it was an approach bound to fuel more conflict and more resentment.

Why do they get to do whatever they want?" Aws complained. They really were completely spoiled. It was appalling to her that a European teenager should have more power than she, an educated and formerly middle-class woman of Raqqa, in her own hometown. But Dua, the good military wife, always reluctant to criticize the militants, offered a justification: "Maybe because they had to leave their countries to come here, it was felt they should be treated more specially.

Those who can afford private schooling need not worry about their children being deprived of art, music and literature in the classroom: they are more sheltered, for now, from the doctrine of efficiency that has been radically refashioning the public school curriculum.

the condemned man's only privilege is to know the time of his death

We're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives—although that's what we tell ourselves—but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.

When you get rid of the estate tax," he (Warren Buffet) said, "you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.

What an extraordinary privilege to be able to make the world better

When you get rid of the estate tax," he said, "you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.

A wealthy, famous, five-foot-six, 140-pound, fifty-eight-year-old white Harvard professor who walked with a cane because of a childhood leg injury would not have been handcuffed and taken down to the station merely for being rude to a cop who'd forced him to produce some form of identification while standing on his own damn property.

My father had been a copper miner, uncles and grandfathers worked in the mines for the Union Pacific. So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who'd had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear.

For most people, throughout most of the twentieth century, medical care necessarily involved an encounter with a social superior—a white male from a relatively privileged background.

I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

Certain pitiful souls around here see whiteness as their last asset that hasn't been totaled or repossessed.

Some of us know how we came by our fortune and some of us don't; but we wear it all the same

Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining?

White is not an origin. It's a mental construct of privilege.

Isn't it crazy? Rich people in the United States don't even know how to use money properly.

Don't count on it. There's a lot of white folks out there hanging on to their God-given right to look down on some other class of people