that favorite saying of so many republicans is “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” which supposedly means you have to help yourself instead of asking for handouts if you want to move up from having nothing to being successful 

but it’s actually derived from the earlier phrase “pull oneself over a fence by one’s bootstraps,” which is a hyperbole referring to the inherent impossibility of the task

and if that doesn’t perfectly sum up the american dream then I don’t know what does