the.com/american dream

means The idea that anyone, regardless of birth or class, can achieve prosperity and success through hard work, ambition, and determination.

from Coined explicitly in 1931 by writer James Truslow Adams in his book 'The Epic of America,' though he struggled to even get the phrase past his publisher, who thought 'dream' sounded too insubstantial for a book title. Adams described it as a land where life should be 'better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement' — explicitly not just about cars and high wages, he insisted, but about social order. The irony is that the phrase was born during the Great Depression, as a piece of hope written against the evidence, and it has carried that tension — aspiration rubbing against reality — ever since.