Popular quotes about Class! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
We are social animals and we have a hierarachical and unequal society. It is a class society, and the class system creates and perpetuates the social role of consumption. We display our class membership and solidify our class positioning in large part through money, through what we have. Consumption is a way of verifying what you have and earn.
Juliet B. SchorI think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.
Billie Joe ArmstrongWhat sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms.
Thomas SowellI'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.
Denise MinaAmericans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.
Anne PerryThe 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 MandelThe problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington access of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger.
Mike HuckabeeAs thinkers, mankind has ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealists on the power of Thought and Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture.
Ralph Waldo EmersonI would not want you to suppose that my rejection of Allen Forte's theory of pitch-class sets implies a rejection of the notion that there can be such a thing as a pitch-class set. It is only when one defines everything in terms of pitch-class sets that the concept becomes meaningless.
George PerleOrganization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is. ... Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority.
Saul AlinskyI get really worried, like if they say, 'Take vocal lessons,' or something because it's kind of like I used to really love to draw when I was a kid and then I took like an art class - because everyone said, 'Oh, you're so good, you should take a class and maybe you can be really good,' and then I went to the class and then they showed me how to use a ruler and perspective and all this stuff and it totally made me not want to do it at all.
Eddie VedderArriving to class late is disruptive of the learning process. I think that it is disrespectful to both the instructor and the students. I generally find a problem with students being tardy to my 9:10 a.m. class, in which students would come in thirty minutes late to this fifty minute class. I started locking my door at 9:15 second semester.
Patricia McCormickIt was only then I realized I didn't know the name of Elodin's class. I leafed through the ledger until I spotted Elodin's name, then ran my finger back to where the title of the class was listed in fresh dark ink: "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass." I sighed and penned my name in the single blank space beneath.
Patrick RothfussI was born into no true class and it was my decision early in life to insinuate myself into the middle class like a spy so that I would have an advantageous position of attack, but I seem now and then to have forgotten my mission, and to have taken my disguises too seriously.
John CheeverFor me there is no reason why to go up in weight class, because when you go up in weight class you have to fight bigger guys - then you have to train against bigger guys. The guys are not better, they're heavier, but it means you have more chance to get hurt.
Georges St-PierreI'd love if people relearned the lessons of the 20th century all over again. Which is to say this country progressed economically and socially when we had a better balance between capital and labor. Neither capital or labor won every argument. The battle between the two created economic tension, and transformed the working class into the middle class, and grew the economy.
David SimonIreland 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 FrenchI've found that I really don't like - as most people don't about school that there are subjects which are necessary to learn but you don't really want to learn on top of those ones that you do want to learn. So to take a class for me, a class or two on subjects that I'm really, really interested in and curious about would be awesome.
Hayden PanettiereToo often students are being taught to read as if literature were some kind of ethics class or civics classโor worse, some kind of self-help manual. In fact, the important thing is the way the writer uses the language.
Francine ProseNow, 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 RubioThe first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.
Friedrich EngelsWe're going to have to invest in the American people again, in tax cuts for the middle class, in health care for all Americans, and college for every young person who wants to go. In businesses that can create the new energy economy of the future. In policies that will lift wages and will grow our middle class. These are the policies I have fought for my entire career.
Barack ObamaPoliticians and bureaucrats are the new upper class in Norway. It is an upper class that is growing by an increasing number of top-paid politicians in municipalities and counties. They let the people suffer, but let themselves go free.
Carl I. HagenEngland is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.
Stephen DaldryIt'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 CharenYou know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.
Damian LewisAre you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you just as the highwaymanโs gun. You must live โฆ You canโt work for yourself โฆ The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must workfor him. You canโt help yourself. You are compelled.
Alexander BerkmanI know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.
Frederick DouglassOur system doesn't work, and it doesn't work, ultimately, not because of Sarah Palin, or the christian right, or Glenn Beck. It doesn't work because the liberal class failed us. The liberal class failed to find the intellectual and moral fortitude to defend liberal values at a time that they were under egregious assault.
Chris HedgesI took a public speaking class in college and managed to make the class laugh a little bit.
Kevin JamesIn the middle of my second year at school, in 1943, I got drafted into the army, was gone for three years, and when I came back, I tried to get into the painting classes which I wanted, but because of all the returned GIs [the GI Bill], everyone was in school and the classes were all full. So I looked at the catalogue and found that there was a ceramic class offered and that there was space in that. I registered for a ceramic class and some drawing classes.
Warren MacKenzieMr. Jones's book is a cleareyed examination of the British class system, and it poses this brutal question: 'How has hatred of working-class people become so socially acceptable?' His timely answers combine wit, left-wing politics and outrage.
Dwight GarnerWhat you want to get as a teacher is not an email or a Facebook post that says, 'I learned so much about headstands in your class'. What you want to get is 'I learned so much about myself and my life in your class'.
Judith Hanson LasaterWe're the highest taxed nation in the world. Our middle class is just reeling from the taxes. And you know, if you think about it, the middle class and the workers of this country, who really built the country, they haven't had a raise in 12 years. They're making less now actually - to be even worse about it, they're making less now than they did 12 years ago.
Donald TrumpWe are seeing a working-class, a middle class, which over the last three decades has seen their wages and income stagnate, while the very rich have seen their tax burden lighten in ways not seen in three or four decades. It's a face of a country that we need to look at and understand that inequality is perhaps the greatest threat to our economic recovery and democracy, and in that context we must take action.
Katrina vanden HeuvelThe historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.
Henry Louis GatesCultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.
James S. ColemanClass certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.
Michael Eric DysonBesides P.E., geography was my best class in high school. I was in this gifted class when I was younger, and it was wicked!
Steve NashI got into trouble a lot in school. They say you're a disturbance in class. You're a distraction, they're moving you around. You never really get rewarded in class for being funny. You're a disturbance. But the funny kid is often witty and clever and quick... they finally get a chance to express themselves when they get out of school.
GodfreyShe doesnโt usually back down that easily.โ โMaybe sheโs got class.โ Eve snorted. โTrust me,โ she said. โThat girlโs got no class at all.
Rachel CaineA stronger middle class is not the consequence of economic growth. A stronger middle class is the cause of economic growth.
Martin O'MalleyGovernments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
Frank HerbertOnly on the third class tourist class passengers' deck was it a sultry overcast morning, but then if you do things on the cheap you must expect these things.
Spike MilliganWhat 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 Obama