Like a lot of you, I grew up in a family on the ragged edges of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance man. After he had a heart attack, my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house.
My parents were not at all backstage parents. We had none of that in the family. It was just very clear right away that I was an actor, even from 4 years old. I've never waited a table. I taught some - I'll teach classes in improv or Shakespeare, but...
I'm very much in the trenches, and I don't live in the lap of luxury. I come from a working-class military family. We watch the news and read the paper and vote, so there's always something to be upset about. I always have a certain amount of angst i...
I founded Atari in my garage in Santa Clara while at Stanford. When I was in school, I took a lot of business classes. I was really fascinated by economics. You end up having to be a marketeer, finance maven and a little bit of a technologist in orde...
Celebrity has become a burden. There are more demands on your time. People think it is glamorous to fly places. But it is not - even if you travel business class and stay in wonderful hotels, you end 10,000 miles away from home.
I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capita...
I had so many offers after 'True Blood' for things that were someone in the same vein, but nowhere near Alan Ball's vision. Or something that was over-the-top and fantastical. And I've always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I've ne...
My sole ambition is to rid Mexico of the class that has oppressed her and given the people a chance to know what real liberty means. And if I could bring that about today by giving up my life, I would do it gladly.
I went to engineering school, which I thought was what I wanted to do, for about two weeks. We had an orientation class and we met this guy where he worked and stuff and it was cool, but I was like, 'There is no way this is going to be my life.'
The education process is moving beyond the traditional classroom/lecture setting. More and more teachers are seeking tools and techniques to engage their classes and enrich their lessons. Video calling is one of these tools, as it removes barriers to...
At a time when the GOP is playing games with the debt limit, a member of the Supreme Court is refusing to recuse himself from matters he has a financial interest in, and middle class incomes are stagnant, many want to change the subject. I don't. Thi...
The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of tha...
In any crass political calculation, drilling for oil will always win more votes than putting a price on carbon. But if I recall what I was taught in fifth-grade American government class, we elect presidents to do more than crass political calculatio...
Illegal immigrants are beginning to comprise a black market class of workers in our society, jeopardizing the financial health of companies which play by the rules, while themselves vulnerable to the exploitation by those willing to take advantage of...
I remember in second grade, everybody in the class had to come up with adjectives for each other, and I got shy. In a way, I force myself to perform, because if I didn't, I'd stay home rolled up in a ball watching 'The Real Housewives of Orange Count...
The Social-Democratic Federation took part in all the political and economic struggles of the English working class; it took pains to bring Socialist views home to them, not only through agitation and propaganda, but also by actions.
George Carlin's album, 'Class Clown,' came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I'd come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don't even know why. I loved it so much I memorized ...
'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way th...
As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy n...
Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialize a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, then centr...
I always wanted to be a writer, and I did want to be a novelist. In college I took a couple of classes that taught me I would never be a novelist. I discovered I had no imagination. My short stories were always thinly veiled memoir.
