Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

As a kid, my dad moved us to the upper town, which was in a higher class of people, and we would see the lower town below. Every day, we could see where we came from and where we were now.

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

The middle class, in the white population, encompasses a wide swath.

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

My parents were determined to move into the middle class.

You can't define what's middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor.

There is no such thing as a black middle class.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

I would describe myself as having a healthy income, but I sure wouldn't describe the son of a postmaster and an encyclopedia saleswoman as upper class, by any stretch of the imagination. I would describe myself as decidedly middle class. I think I'm extremely fortunate.

I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.

The middle has not enough class that I think about the middle class.

For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.

Maybe it’s that silver spoon in his [Mitt Romney’s] mouth that keeps him from seeing why the middle class doesn’t pull itself up by its bootstraps, like he did when Daddy loaned him his first million dollars.

A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have something equivalent in an additional decade.

Our parents’ incomes play a larger role in our personal economic fortunes than is true for other peer countries.

I was an anomaly because my father was a Harvard man, and he came from a family of poor people.

The Princeton economist Alan Krueger has demonstrated that societies with higher levels of income inequality are societies with lower levels of social mobility.

The middle class is a group defined by more than just money: it also leans on credentials, education, aspirations, assets, and, of course, household income.

I went from the projects to a real house. It was a big difference.

Every country has rich people. But only a few places have achieved a vibrant and stable middle class. And in the history of the world, none has been more vibrant and more stable than the American middle class.

I think there's a tendency in England, when you look at the past, to either have upper middle class period drama with its own rules, or if you're going to look at working class people, you have to do that in a particular 'Isn't it a shame, aren't they oppressed' way, or it's treated comically.

Not that I am hugely working class, but in the U.K. I'm always perceived, casting-wise, as being working class.

What is the deepest passion for me and for us is the historic investment in the middle class and in - as I say often because I was that guy growing up - the dreams of those who look up who want to get into the middle class. That I feel the strongest about.

I know, it sounds generic and is a cliche, but coming from a middle class family in Kanpur, it was always the neighbourhood opinions which mattered.