John Major Quotes

We must be thoroughly democratic and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

To be prosperous is not to be superior, and should form no barrier between men. Wealth ought not to secure the prosperous the slightest consideration.

In a country where there is no privileged class, genius and industry may attain the highest honors.

The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.

I've always felt that, in America, we're all equal. I don't care what you make or what kind of car you drive. You're not better than me.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

Conservatives often say that we should care not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity.

Matters goeth not well to pass in England, nor shall not do till everything be in common … that there be no greater masters than we be.

In America, opportunity and equality are not a zero-sum game

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

There is nothing in the Lawes or Customes of England, which excludes any the meanest man’s Childe, from arriving to the highest Offices in the this Kingdom

Here, no privileged orders – no factitious distinctions in society – no hereditary nobility – no royal prerogatives exist, to interpose barriers between the people, and to create distinct classifications in society. All men being considered as enjoying an equality of rights, the propriety and necessity of dispensing, without distinction, the blessings of education ….

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

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.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

In our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system advanced beyond all the world.

The intelligent quest is for the free society with equality of opportunity. The quest for equality of result is the path to the widest equality of all: despotism.

I stand for the square deal.... I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and reward.

Education ... is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery.

We are a nation without classes or special privileges.

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

Superior ability is not the exclusive possession of any one race or any one class.

I want my kids to grow up in a world where everybody gets a fair shot.

Labour is a great leveler of all distinctions.