Talk:Rags to riches

The opposite
Riches might not be as worthy of a goal as popular belief might desire to be so. Too, the American Dream has to do with coming here and exploiting things in order to become filthy rich? Our 400 years of history need to be rethought and retaught. For starters, the Criticism page ought to look to people who saw a more moderate mode as much preferred: Tolstoy (how much is enough?), Spinoza (enough to maintain the intellectual ability - presupposing that the physical requirements are met), any of the myriad type of folks who took the vow of poverty, and many more. BTW, making ill-begotten gains through that crazy scheme of the ca-pital-sino is definitely not to be given lots of praise (examples abound in the riches of Silicon Valley ways) as only the few can extract value. If we tried to fund all that way, there would be nothing left after the top few took theirs.jmswtlk (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Sir Gareth
We can't possible be serious about Sir Gareth in Arthurian myth right? He was Arthur's nephew and was only disguised as a kitchen boy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.230.48.34 (talk) 14:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Need more examples of true-life rags-to-riches stories. Quadell 23:49, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This may be so, but do you think Hitler is a good example? As I see it, some basic moral principles are an integral part of a success story of the rags to riches type. Even Scrooge McDuck is probably contentious. |l'KF'l| 21:47, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * I was grasping when I made this list. Please, feel free to replace Hitler with someone more appropriate.   – Quadell (talk) (help)   00:22, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)


 * Hitler did make many self-serving claims about his poverty, but in fact he came from a quite prosperous middle-class background (his father was a relatively well-off civil servant). As Robert G.L. Waite's book "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler" explains, Hitler's income during his "poverty years" in Vienna was comfortably more than the average school teacher or postal official was making. Hitler would be a good example of a false rags-to-riches story. Far from working as a common laborer just to survive, Hitler lived a life of leisure in Vienna. -- Steven.

--210.84.14.149 16:35, 8 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Hitler aside (the hell?), examples of real-life "rags to riches" stories are generally unnecessary and border on listcruft for this article. If someone wants to include lives that are notable because of their humble origins, that is, notable explicitly for this reason, that might be useful, but this would otherwise be a half-assed compilation of every notable figure in human history who had reputedly humble beginnings. It wouldn't just be a bad list, being necessarily incomplete (due to the vast number of such figures in history), it would also be completely useless to anyone and everyone who wasn't just looking for another random link to click. Removing that section for this reason. 24.211.213.120 03:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

dab or article?
Is this a dab page or an article? It's quite difficult to tell. &mdash;/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 15:45, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Jon J Jenkins
This entry's been added twice, and an explanation of his notability is needed. I have commented the name out for the second time. 80.5.13.230, before he's added back again, please explain his notability. .`^) Painediss`cuss (^`.  02:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Destroy a myth
Education (including college education) does not 'end poverty' like we've been brainwashed by capitalists to believe: "With few exceptions, the fortune-builders of more recent date, like their nineteenth-century forerunners, had little interest in school even when it was available to them... Many who weren't high school dropouts were grade-school dropouts..." Ferdinand Lundberg, "The Rich and the Super-Rich." The only way to get rich in Capitalist wage slavery is by good luck or by doing something shady or illegal as Lundberg proves (& others). Stars4change (talk) 05:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Origins in Horatio Alger?
Did "rags to riches" originate with Horatio Alger or become popular through his works?

According to the Library of Congress, the phrase or its likes appear in novel titles, e.g, Ragged Dick, or, Street life in New York with the boot-blacks (1868).

Certainly, the phrase is closely associated with him, as one biography demonstrates: From Rags to Riches:  Horatio Alger, Jr., and the American Dream (1963). Any other thoughts on this issue?--Aboudaqn (talk) 17:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I understand that Alger's stories did not deal with people rising to riches but more like from extreme poverty to being middle class -- I don't think the characters ever or often became the equivalent of millionaires (in fact, the Wiki bio discusses this).--Jrm2007 (talk) 01:18, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Myth and Fact
Shouldn't there be some sort of delineation between mythical rags-to-riches stories (fairy tales, Arthurian legend) and real stories? It's a bit confusing when they are in a list together. 152.3.68.7 (talk) 14:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC) Somewhere there is a piece of text that goes: " Beggars make rags, Rags make paper, Paper makes money, Money makes banks, Banks make loans, Loans make beggars...", someone might want to find origin of, or more about this. SignedJohnsonL623 (talk) 09:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

What Literary Genre
What I'm curious about is "to what literary genre does 'rags to riches' belong?" It is not listed among the genres or supra-genres in Robert McKee's book, "Story." Not that the book is definitive. How have others classified it? Sysfrank (talk) 10:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

History section
What this article really needs is a section on the history of the rags-to-riches mythology in literature and folklore. I recently stumbled across Giovanni Francesco Straparola (see the "subsection" entitled "Invention of the Rise Tale") and thought that that sort of thing should be incorporated here. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 16:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Jim Morrison and Louis Armstrong
Jim Morrison should be excluded from the list. His family was not particularly wealthy, but not poor either. A much better example, which is missing, is Louis Armstrong, who was raised in poverty. 2A02:810C:C240:5968:40AB:56DF:1A2F:9187 (talk) 13:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Chris Gardner
From reading the book The Pursuit of Happyness, I'm not entirely sure if Chris Gardner should be on here. (The film with Will Smith playing Gardner only covers about a quarter of the book.) The family that he grew up in was actually fairly prosperous, but his step-father abused him and this prompted him to leave.

I'm not trying to denigrate the man at all. He clearly did very well from his background. I'm just not sure if you can call it "rags to riches" when his family were fairly well-off. Epa101 (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The Beatles?
Hey what about The Beatles? All of them came from working class families from Liverpool. I mean not as poor like Elvis but still pretty modest. Paburo fg 00 (talk) 19:32, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton
He grew up poor and fatherless on a Caribbean island and rose to prominence as an immigrant in New York City. Should he be included in the "historical" section? Buffyinfaith (talk) 21:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)