Popular quotes about Class! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Of course, an English aristocrat might have some contact with the staff downstairs and could adequately say a thing or two about inter-class dramas unfolding in the household. But something less parochial might be harder to come by. This is relevant because stories about the divisiveness of class are by definition stories that straddle class boundaries. A story about a miner in a mining town is not obviously one that speaks to the divisiveness of class. In other words, class doesn't just divide us in the world but it also divides us in the stories we're presented.
Zia Haider RahmanThe interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.
Calvin TrillinImagine a ship that is sinking and needs all the available power to run the pumps to drain out the rising waters. The first class passengers refuse to cooperate because they feel hot and want to use the air-conditioner and other electrical appliances. The second-class passengers spend all their time trying to be upgraded to first-class status. The boat sinks and the passengers all drown. That is where the present approach to climate change is leading.
Matthieu RicardThe only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class.
Ernest MandelIf you travel first class, you think first class and you are more likely to play first class.
Ray FloydThe ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.
Karl MarxI get bored doing the same activity over and over. In any one week, I could do a Pilates class, a yoga class, go to a gym, like a pump class, or do weights and then go for a run. Each day, I like to change it up a bit.
Jessica McNameeAny man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainly that class's own worst enemy.
Theodore RooseveltThe initial 18th-, 19th-century intention was to give the less-educated lower classes a way to move up into this new, rising middle class, to enable them to fit in. So our view of language as being class-based is an unintended consequence of the drive to help educate rising businessmen.
Kory StamperThe more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.
Guy DebordIt is terribly important to do certain things, such as wear overembroidered dresses. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass.
Imelda MarcosIreland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.
Tana FrenchWe're bankrupting our country and we have an empire that we're trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year. And the standard of living is going down today. It's going down and the middle class is hurting because of the monetary policy. When you destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.
Ron PaulThe astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.
Sally RideSocialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.
Friedrich August von HayekNow, the political class tries to make sense of all of this, but they can't, because never has the political class or the mainstream media that covers them been more out of touch with the American people than they are today.
Marco RubioIt's a peculiar thing about liberals. When it comes to middle-class people who are fully capable of caring for themselves, liberals seek to undermine their independence in every way possible. With seductive 'entitlements' like guaranteed retirement, health care, nutrition, education, and jobs, liberals attempt to lure the middle class into dependence on the state. But when it comes to those who are truly incompetent, those whose mental afflictions render them unable to manage their lives at all, liberals are suddenly transformed into absolutists for personal autonomy.
Mona CharenThe class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.
James MadisonFor simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.
Francis CrickDonald Trump and Hillary Clinton are not themselves members of the middle class, not by a long shot, which means they've searched for other ways to prove to voters that they care about their concerns and understand what middle class workers are going through.
Tamara KeithI did my BA in English lit, and hated the restriction - I'd always read more in translation than not; coming from a working-class background, what I knew of as British literature - the writers who made big prize lists and/or were stocked in WH Smith, Doncaster's only bookshop until I was 17 - seemed incredibly, alienatingly middle-class. Then in 2009, just after the financial crash, I graduated with no more specific skill than 'can analyse a bit of poetry'.
Deborah SmithThe Republican establishment, the Democrat establishment agree and accept that the media is an equal player in the ruling class. Trump has blown all of that out the window. As such, the normal ways that people in politics are controlled, the normal way that people are contained - the ways people are promoted, punished, destroyed, what have you - are all out the window where Trump is concerned. And therefore the media is considered by the ruling class to be one of the great leveling factors.
Rush LimbaughI'm often in conversations with people who have learning disabilities, and they talk about how they were teased and perhaps laughed at sometimes as children. That was never the case with me. Maybe it was something about my personality, my temperament, but I don't ever remember being teased. I remember the awkwardness of leaving class to go to a special class, but that's all.
Jerry Pinkney...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.
Karl MarxWhat's a problem with India, in particular, is female feticide - aborting a female fetus. It is unacceptable and illegal, but it happens on a large scale. Then there's also the killing of baby girls. Female feticide is pretty much middle-class, Indian experts say. This is not happening among the poor; they just have to keep bearing children and hope they live. This casts into doubt the spurious argument that we just have to wait until everyone's middle class and then all of this will sort itself out. Better-off women will have fewer children - but at what cost?
Barbara CrossetteTalking about success in society, no one can complain, because today everyone can choose what he or she wants. They don't just have to choose between being proletarian or middle-class. Those kinds of things do not exist anymore. Today working class boys can play football and become multimillionaires. On football! There are no longer classes, who say that we are poor, we are suppressed by you etc.
Odd NerdrumAn old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.
Christopher HitchensWhen 1:45 came, half the class left, and Danny Hupfer whispered, "If she gives you a cream puff after we leave, I'm going to kill you" - which was not something that someone headed off to prepare for his bar mitzvah should be thinking. When 1:55 came and the other half of the class left, Meryl Lee whispered, "If she gives you one after we leave, I'm going to do Number 408 to you." I didn't remember what Number 408 was, but it was probably pretty close to what Danny Hupfer had promised. Even Mai Thi looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, "I know your home." Which sounded pretty ominous.
Gary D. SchmidtChinais a world class if not the world class property bubble, primarily high-rise buildings, offices and condos.
James ChanosNo class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.
Wendell PhillipsIf you want to do something to destroy consumer spending, just eat away at the middle class because the other problem we have is the structural problem of middle class America.
Wilbur RossMy students - all adults - bring a lot of writing skill to the first class, and they and I get better as the class progresses.
James ThayerIf we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.
Muhammad AliWhat we have to do is make sure that here in America, if you work hard, you can get ahead. If you worked hard, not only did you have a good job, but you also had decent benefits, decent health care. We've got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to expand the middle class and people who are working hard can get into the middle class.
Barack ObamaTeachers often make the mistake of thinking they're the boss of the class; they're not. The boss of the class is sitting down there somewhere.
Philip PullmanThe whole struggle of our Party (and of the working class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement.
Vladimir LeninThe more a ruling class is able to assimilate the most prominent men of a ruled class, the more solid and dangerous its rule.
Karl MarxThe pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.
David MametI'm working class, my family was working class, and we have struggled the same way our neighbors here in San Francisco have struggled.
Cindy SheehanI think success has a downside. The more successful you get and the more out there you are in the world, the more vulnerable you are and the more you are open to hate, especially because of social media. But it also depends what you class as success, because someone could do something mean and class that as success for them. But for me, if you're doing something positive that's allowing someone to have a better wellbeing, or embrace their life more, you have to go for it, but know there's always going to be people who hate on you for doing what you're doing.
Harnaam KaurThe issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country.
Tim McGrawAs a child I used to watch clouds, and in them, see faces, castles, animals, dragons, and giants. It was a world of escape--fantasy; something to inject wonder and adventure into the mundane, regulated life of a middle-class boy leading a middle-class life.
Barry B. Longyear