Quotes About Class

The United States is a special case, and for me, very interesting. It's studied carefully and we know a lot about it. One of the most striking features of the elections is the class-based character of the vote. Now, class is not discussed or even measured in the United States. In fact, the word is almost obscene, except for the term "middle class." And you can't get exact class data; the census doesn't even give class data. But you can sort of see the significance of it just from income figures.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

The People's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class revolution fails and that with the leadership of the working class revolution triumphs.

There were class differences among black people then and there are class differences among black people now. There is still an assumption among many people in American society that being black is its own class, a blanket class. That, I believe, is an erroneous and deeply offensive view.

It`s not just Republicans. It`s Republicans and Democrats. It`s middle class, lower middle class, working class Americans who have felt the angst, who are frustrated, who are angry as a result of 1% growth which, in my view, has been really the issue that has propelled Donald Trump from day one.

If you travel first class, you think first class and you are more likely to play first class.

I do not see class as a 'structure', nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships... the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. ...And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs

I 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.

One of the bigger misconceptions of learning is that many skills take a lifetime to get world-class at, or 10,000 hours to become world-class at.

Elodin proved a difficult man to find. He had an office in Hollows, but never seemed to use it. When I visited Ledgers and Lists, I discovered he only taught one class: Unlikely Maths. However, this was less than helpful in tracking him down, as according to the ledger, the time of the class was 'now' and the location was 'everywhere.

I got a flash of ... what it means, now, 'you can't be too rich or too thin.' How well it works, will keep on working, because the vast majority of women will never be thin. Thin enough. How well the hope of class mobility keeps every mother dieting, and handing the diets down to her daughter, hoping the daughter may do even better. When you combine this with the fact that many non-white peoples tend to be heavier than white folks, dieting becomes a tool not only in enforcing class but in encouraging assimilation.

Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women's movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.

I'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.

The light bulb going off in my head was a fear that in this pivotal moment in history, when America faces so many serious problems, when the middle class and working class of this country are being decimated, that there were not voices out there representing the tens of millions of people who needed a voice. And the idea of going through a campaign where there is not a serious discussion about the most important issues facing America, where there are not voices out there representing people who are hurting - that seemed to me unacceptable.

Teaching is my most reliable form of human contact. I love the opportunity to speak Spanish (which I don't do at home), the give-and-take with students, the surprises. One day you think you have the goods for a sensational class and it bombs. The next day you have nothing and the class turns out splendidly.

The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule.... It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.

I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.

We used to call the 1% the ruling class, but America's never felt comfortable using that terminology. It was taboo to talk about class war. Americans are okay talking about it like this; everyone wants to be part of the 99%, even the cops are like, "No, no, man. I'm part of the 99% too." No one wants to be part of the 1%.

Donald 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.

Stuff Happens.’ That’s the G-rated version. That’s a bumper sticker that only a straight white upper middle class male could have made. Because anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who isn’t male, anyone who isn’t white, anyone who isn’t upper middle class knows that stuff doesn’t just happen. Stuff gets done by people to people. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is random. This isn’t osmosis. And so we act as if it’s this passive thing, but yet that’s not the case.

We will lower the tax burden on middle class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate.

A strong economy depends on a strong middle class, but George Bush has put the middle class in a hole, and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush's shovel.

In order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor.

I travel third-class because there is no fouth-class.

We'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.

The economy has definitely been improving, and things like the stock market are doing better, but the economy has to be good for working-class and middle-class families who work every day, send their kids to a school like is in front of my house, and they have to be able to enjoy their lives. That's why you don't pass a trade agreement that ships even more jobs overseas.

Class has always been a staple of British comedy. We've always been able to laugh at it. When British shows are translated to America, the absence of the equivalent class structure there often causes them to fail. But over here we've always got comic mileage out of it.

Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.

The human animal varies from class to class, culture to culture. In one way we are consistent: We are irrational.

...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.

The 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.

I started a writing class, not in service of writing a script or writing anything specific. I've just really been enjoying that, and oddly the group, not by design, but it just happened to be all women, and there were three women who gave birth this fall while we were all in class, and there's just something really great about getting to know these women through their stories and what they're writing about.

It doesn't make sense. [Republicans are] not for us. You're not for my values. We're working class people mostly and blue collar. We're your cops, we're your firemen, we're your carpenters and the things we need - we need to protect our unions, we need to protect our Medicare, we need to protect the working class person.

There is a huge antipathy in England between the north and the south, the working class and the owning class.

...it was always our view that in order to attain this [proletarian revolution] and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew.

Well, first of all I think that we have to be careful with terms like the working class, obviously. When [Karl] Marx wrote about the working class he was writing about something much more bounded than we're talking about.

This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.

I think building the middle class, investing in the middle class, making college debt-free so more young people can get their education, helping people refinance their - their debt from college at a lower rate. Those are the kinds of things that will really boost the economy.

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.

The university and in a general way, all teaching systems, which appear simply to disseminate knowledge, are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class.

I think improv training really orients you to character development, more than taking a Strasberg class or Meisner class. Not only is it about developing character really quickly, but it's also about being a good partner in the scene.

Scallops are expensive, so they should be treated with some class. But then, I suppose that every creature that gives his life for our table should be treated with class.

If 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.

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.

I've gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.

The American cinema in general always made stories about working-class people; the British rarely did. Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to.

We have to get back to a government where leaders are willing to talk across party lines and do not have absolute politics as the goal. Our goal has to be bettering the country, making sure we have an education system that is world-class and a healthcare system that is world-class, making sure social security is safe. People don't care who is huddling in a corner with whom, making the next political move. If you are elected to do a job, you are supposed to do it to the best of your ability.

After the countrywide victory of the Chinese revolution and the solution of the land problem, two basic contradictions will still exist in China. The first is internal, that is, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The second is external, which is the contradiction between China and the imperialist countries. Consequently, after the victory of the people's democratic revolution, the state power of the people's republic under the leadership of the working class must not be weakened but must be strengthened.