Nikki Ramirez

“If you had asked Ali, before he went to New Orleans, what he thought of people who didn’t help themselves, he would have said, “My parents had to start all over again. What’s the big deal? Just suck it up.” The sight of little kids post-Katrina jolted him. “It kind of blew my mind—if you are in kindergarten you should at least get a fair shot. It was just eye-opening: to see how much your geography could determine the opportunities available to you.”
― Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy

“Why is it that people channel so many of their hang-ups about people who are poor or unsuccessful into the food-stamps program?” asks Concannon as we settle into our chairs, then answers his own question.”
― Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy

“There’s a real idealism that you have to indulge to think that people in New Orleans were now going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. There were no bootstraps.”
― Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy

“problem wasn’t as simple as a bad cop. Maybe it was the emotional state in which the cop had found himself.”
― Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy