J. D. Vance Quotes
-
I once interviewed my grandma for a class project about the Second World War. After 70 years filled with marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty and triumph, the thing about which she was unquestionably the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during the war.
-
People have lost their faith that if they work hard, if they try to get ahead, if they play by the rules, then that will ultimately result in positive outcomes.
-
Recently, a friend sent me the online musings of a televangelist who advised his thousands of followers that the Federal Reserve achieved satanic ends by manipulating the world's money supply. Paranoia has replaced piety.
-
Folks like me have to feel a little indebted to the communities that they came from. And if they do, I think we'll start to see a little bit more of a geographic integration in the country because people will start to think, 'You know what? I owe that place something, and I should return to it in one form or another.'
-
Church attendance rates among white Americans without a college education have dropped pretty significantly. People with college degrees are more likely to go to church than people without college degrees among the white working class.
-
It's jarring to live in a world where every person feels his life will only get better when you came from a world where many rightfully believe that things have become worse. And I've suspected that this optimism blinds many in Silicon Valley to the real struggles in other parts of the country. So I decided to move home to Ohio.
-
I never wanted to be a public intellectual or a talking head.
-
As a culture, working-class white Americans like myself had no heroes. We loved the military but had no George S. Patton figure in the modern army. I doubt my neighbours could even name a high-ranking military officer.
-
People listen to what their political leaders are telling them, and my view is both that Trump is tapping into some racially ugly attitudes, but also that he is leading people to racially ugly attitudes.
-
It's not just that government has failed us. It's not just that we have failed ourselves. It's government. It's individuals. It's sort of everything in between, from families and communities and neighborhoods, churches and so forth.
-
The most depressing part of the 2016 election is that the candidates often failed to show any cultural leadership: any recognition that the world of public policy was important but hardly the only good and necessary part of our shared society.
-
While faith need not be monolithic - it can motivate both voting behavior and character development - focus matters. A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.
-
For complicated historical and political reasons, we associate 'poor' in our public consciousness with 'black.' Terms such as 'welfare queen' and 'culture of poverty' became associated uniquely with the social maladies of African Americans in urban ghettos, despite the fact that poor whites outnumbered poor blacks.
-
People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton.
-
I've always just felt a little out of place. I still feel out of place in San Francisco. It's this place where everything is going great, and everyone feels super optimistic about the world. It's a little different about how I grew up.
-
The increasing segregation we have in our country geographically and culturally has led to these pretty monolithic views of different classes of people, and because of that, we've lost a certain amount of cultural cohesion.
-
The person in New York City is showing too little empathy for the Trump voter. The Trump voter is showing too little empathy for the person who's very worried about the refugee ban. They're not spending enough time with each other to have a meaningful conversation.
-
One of the most interesting social trends of the past 20 years is the rise of residential segregation. So rich are living with rich and poor are living with poor.
-
I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.
-
I don't think that the Left has a monopoly on bad ideas. I don't think the Right has a monopoly on good ideas.
-
The idea that working a blue-collar job and living in a working-class community provides barriers that are unique to your circumstances - that's not a very controversial subject anymore. I think it's something that people on both the Left and the Right probably accept.
-
Every two weeks, I'd get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.
-
My military service is the thing I'm most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can't help but tell myself I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.
-
I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me... Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me.