I got mine

I got mine

English

Phrase

I got mine

1. (often used attributively) Used to convey that one has achieved success and that others should be able to as well regardless of ability, background, or circumstances.
   • 2008, Bambi Higgins, "The Black Situation Comedy", in African Americans and Popular Culture (ed. Todd Boyd), page 227:

     Strutting with pride over his nouveau-riche status, George [Jefferson of The Jeffersons] embodied and employed the trickle-down economic values of Reagan-era America, as well as an "I got mine," up-by-your-bootstraps ideology that was simultaneously mocked and celebrated in this version of a social sitcom.

   • 2010, Phil Edmonston, Lemon-Aid New Cars and Trucks 2010, page 341:

     BMWs have excellent road manners, depreciate slowly, and have an “I got mine!” cachet that buyers find hard to resist.

   • 2014, Roger Lee Ray, Progressive Faith and Practice: Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, unnumbered page:

     Rand liked to call her view “objectivism” though some liken it to libertarianism. It reminds me more of an “I got mine” philosophy than of anything else. Most of us live in a world somewhere between the extremes of absolute selfishness and absolute self-abnegation.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:I got mine.

See also

• pull oneself up by one's bootstraps