Dawn Steel Quotes

When you grow up on the other side of the tracks, you're used to taking a few bumps.

I grew up poor. The fact that I had to struggle to succeed, that wasn't a big deal to me. I'd struggled my whole life.

I'm interested in people who have to overcome obstacles, people who are not sheltered by the umbrella of the establishment, marginals.

As in the rankest soil the most beautiful flowers are grown, so in the dark soil of poverty the choicest flowers of humanity have developed and bloomed.

No, I was two years older than the other guys. I was a war baby. My family were a lot poorer than they were. I'd had to fight too hard for anything I had in my life and to smash things up for me.

I was an outsider... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up.

We grew up in a very strange world, because my mother was up against it all when she had three black children.

I came out even with all the struggles I endured on Rikers Island.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood, so there was always a sense of struggle, but we had hope.

I was born into long odds. I know what the David versus Goliath story is. My life has been that.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

I grew up in a really horrible school system, but my parents did not let that define how we function. They gave me more work at home from them than I ever got from school. To learn about the history of myself and my people, and that armors me.

Dr. Ben Carson has the most moving personal narrative in modern presidential politics. His mother, one of 24 children, had only a third-grade education. She was married at age 13, bore Ben and his brother, and then raised the boys as an impoverished single mother in Detroit. As a young boy, Carson was a terrible student.

I've survived. I've beaten my own bad system, and on some days, on most days, that feels like a miracle.

My father was raised in an orphanage, and my mother was an immigrant from Poland whose first childhood memory was of hunger. Somehow, despite all of that, I am called a member of the 'elite.' If so, I damned well earned it.

Every step of the way, life was hard. I was supposed to be a statistic.

The people I admire most are those doing outstanding things for the poorest children, such as Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne academy, Dan Moynihan and all those at the Harris academies, and those at chains such as Ark and the Haberdashers, who are driving up standards in the poorest areas.

Long before I achieved financial success and became the subject of a Hollywood film, I was a veteran, a single father, and a working person who was homeless.

Cancer definitely rekindled my spirit. It made me realise that every human being has the capacity to overcome a huge setback.

I'm a man at the end of the day and I come from the streets, the trenches, I came from nothing, water and cornflakes.

I grew up in low-income areas and I've seen people take negative energy and just accept it. They give into and end up living a pretty rough life. At a young age, I just knew I wasn't going to give in because I didn't want to end up being one of those people in the neighborhood that didn't have anything and lived a hard life.

There are prime examples - me, Natasha Jonas, Tony Bellew, Toni Duggan - who have come from areas around Liverpool that haven't been the wealthiest. But we've also been determined to get out and then to give back.

There's a lot of oppressed people in Tottenham, but people in Tottenham also know how to turn pain into triumph.

My whole life, people have doubted me. My mom did. People told me in high school I'm too short and not fast enough to play basketball. They didn't know my story. Because if they did, they'd know that anything is possible.

It's kind of almost not fair that certain people don't get the opportunities that others get just because of where they are born or where they were brought up.