Mary Douglas Quotes

If you're doing something outside of dominant culture, there's not an easy place for you. You will have to do it yourself.

There are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the American Dream at all.

When people lack jobs, opportunity, and ownership of property they have little or no stake in their communities.

Where there is no work, there is no dignity.

You can see what happens when people don't feel they have a chance. You can see the ramifications of that.

I don't have the privilege of choice to say, 'I want to work with you,' and the person will say, 'Yes, come on, I will write a film for you.' It doesn't happen for people like me who come from the outside.

I know what it's like to think the system has left you behind.

I like the idea of playing people outside of society. That's where I tend to be drawn.

Young people, all too often, find their interests overlooked and their voices ignored.

I never expected to run into a room and suddenly I belonged. I figured people who live on the fringes of society, they're more free. They can choose to visit anywhere; they don't belong to anywhere. It's like being without a nation, in a way.

A poor man is like a foreigner in his own country.

I think it is fundamental to understand that the ethics of politics indicate that you should concentrate your efforts on those marginalized people who live in poverty with few opportunities to develop individually.

I was kind of the black sheep with the Disney kids. I was uninterested in making friends with most of them. I didn't really fall into 'the Disney mold.' I was more or less the kid hanging out with the crew members and got along with them far better.

In the underdeveloped countries, we have young men and women, many of them of capacity but without opportunity to improve themselves. They cannot do so without help.

France has the least social mobility of any developed country. The social elevator no longer works. It's broken.

There's a lot of potential that goes unused in places like South Central L.A., a lot of brilliant, smart people who just don't have that chance to show it.

I come from the bottom of the ladder. I'm from Norwich. Not many people seem to know about it.

I like being an outsider. It is better in France on the outside.

Many young Muslims see no opportunities for themselves and do not feel they have control over their lives or a stake in their nation's future. Such pessimism leads to disengagement. We risk losing a generation of young Muslims to apathy and extremism.

I've never wanted to be part of an inner circle of any scene. I've always been an outsider looking to question and subvert.

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised.

They don’t hate the West because of any specific policy or action like Israel or Iraq. They just hate because they have been unsuccessful; they feel that they’ve been denied their rightful place in life.

Deep persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise …. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless.

Keeping people on the margins of cultural, social and political life constitutes in many nations one of the most glaring injustices of our time.

I swear to the Lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me.