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Quote by Louis Yako

“The hierarchy of most workplaces in America looks very much like climbing high mountains—the higher you get, the whiter the scenery becomes.”

Quote by Louis Yako

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Louis Yako

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“When asked, every other White privileged American—especially males—will tell you that their dream is to have their own company and brew their own beer! Ironically, their dream springs out of the total misery and toxic work environments they experience. Yet, instead of challenging and changing this reality for all, they dream of walking away and having their own company to repeat the same old game again.”

FearChangeInjusticeAmerican DreamWork EthicWorkplace PoliticsWorkplace CultureMidnset
Author:Louis Yako
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“My parents were really into the whole “American Dream” thing when I was growing up. They didn’t know that by the time we could attain it, the American Dream had morphed into something else entirely, and no one could pinpoint what it was anymore. But maybe that was the whole point. In America, the dream is whatever you think it is.”

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Book:At the End of the World, Turn Left
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“As I would learn later on, developed countries will always welcome the Einsteins of this world -- those individuals whose talents are already recognized and deemed to have value. This welcome doesn't usually extend to the poor and uneducated people seeking to enter the country. But the truth, supported by the facts of history and the richness of immigrant contribution to America's distinction in the world, is that the most entrepreneurial, innovative, motivated citizen is the one who has been given an opportunity and wants to repay the debt.”

ImmigrationAmerican Dream
Book:Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
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“But in a society with no central motivation, so far adrift and puzzled with itself that its President feels called upon to appoint a Committee on National Goals, a sense of alienation is likely to be very popular--especially among people young enough to shrug off the guilt they're suppose to feel for deviating from a goal or purpose they never understood in the first place. Let the old people wallow in the shame of having failed. The laws they made to preserve a myth are no longer pertinent; the so called American Way begins to seem like a dike made of cheap cement, with many more leaks than the law has fingers to plug. America has been breeding mass anomie since the end of World War II. It is not a political thing, but the sense of new realities, or urgency, anger and sometimes desperation in a society where even the highest authorities seem to be grasping at straws.”

American Dream
Author:Hunter S Thompson
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“My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger" - Billy Connolly”

LifeWarRomanceLiteratureFriendshipMusicAdventureDramaAbuseTragedyLove StoryRecoveryIntimacyImmigrantsVietnamRock N RollAmerican Dream1960sVisionsContemporary FictionCountercultureFolkCivil UnrestPositive Ending
Book:Boulder Blues: A Tale of the Colorado Counterculture
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“The way the kids of immigrants heard about America, you would think it was not down the stairs and out the door but still across the ocean, a distant place where everything is promised and, for hard work, everything is given. From the day he left his parents' house, Abe [Reles] had to know his father was right, that America promises everything, but he also had to know his father was wrong--America gives nothing. Those things that are promised, they cannot be worked for but must be taken, conned away with good looks, obsequiousness, mimicry; or traded for with bit of your soul or the morals of the stories your parents told; or tricked away with lies; or wrested away with brute force.”

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Book:Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams
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“It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “the American dream.” The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best that we can be. Adams acknowledged that the United States didn’t fully live up to that ideal, but he argued that America came closer than anywhere else.”

AmericaWealthUnited StatesImprovementAmerican DreamJames Truslow Adams
Author:Nicholas D. Kristof
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