“While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not.”

— Howard Zinn , book A People's History of the United States

Ch. 11 http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnbaron11.html
A People's History of the United States (1980)
Context: While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not." by Howard Zinn?

Howard Zinn photo

Howard Zinn 69

author and historian 1922–2010

Related quotes

“To end the humiliation was a start, but to end poverty is a bigger task.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council (1967)
Context: Today Negroes want above all else to abolish poverty in their lives and in the lives of the white poor. This is the heart of their program. To end the humiliation was a start, but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is natural for Negroes to turn to the labor movement because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty program….

“…in order to change poverty into wealth, one must start by displaying it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(420).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“These are countries that started with higher levels of poverty incidence than our country but have successfully managed to lessen, if not virtually eliminate, extreme poverty.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“If a big country like the United States did return to the gold standard, it would start a great deflation. Most likely the government couldn't stick to it for long. They'd switch the policy to some halfway measure like a gold exchange standard.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

“Some have certain common places, and themes, wherein they are good and want variety; which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious, and when it is once perceived, ridiculous.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Discourse

“But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“The birch, most shy and lady-like of trees,
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves,
And hints at her foregone gentilities
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

An Indian Summer Reverie http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1164/, st. 8 (1846)

“The world isn't fair? What a huge revelation! Some people in power abuse those they have power over? Amazing! When did this start happening?”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“The haggardness of poverty is everywhere seen contrasted with the sleekness of wealth, the exhorted labour of some compensating for the idleness of others, wretched hovels by the side of stately colonnades, the rags of indigence blended with the ensigns of opulence; in a word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the most urgent wants.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. l

“The people who lived in the countryside around Treblinka—Poles, for the most part—said that they did not know what was going on in the camp; said that, while in a general way they might have guessed what was going on, they did not know for sure; said that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), p. 19

Related topics