Quotes About Class

The 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.

A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.

As the acting class was going on, I just realized I just knew more about cinema than the other people in the class. I cared about cinema and they cared about themselves. But two, was actually at a certain point I just realized that I love movies too much to simply appear in them. I wanted the movies to be my movies.

Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.

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.

Political change and academic change and intellectual change are obviously crucial, but they don't necessarily change society. They can change a particular class and give everybody in that class great arguments, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the body of the culture.

I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.

In Britain, class is a neurosis. You judge people from the moment they open their mouth and start speaking: what their accent represents in terms of where they were educated, what part of the country they're from, what kind of class background they have.

Making my class laugh and getting in trouble. I was the class clown.

If you come from a working-class background, you can't afford to write full time, because you're just not being paid. Basically, all my arguments come down to Marxist doctrine: The world is shaped by money, so the only voices you'll hear are the ones with money behind them. But thankfully, culture and cool are some things that circumvent money, because if you're cool, people will want to give you money - suddenly you shape the market and people start coming to you. Which is why culture has always been a traditional way out for working-class people.

The 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.

We owe to democracy, at least in part, the regime of discussion with which we live; we owe it to the principal modern liberties: those of thought, press and association. And the regime of free discussion is the only one which permits the ruling class to renew itself... which eliminates that class quasi-automatically when it no longer corresponds to the interests of the country.

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%.

The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.

Just as invasion is the true and tried weapon in the hands of capital against the class struggle, so on the other hand the fearless pursuit of the class struggle has always proven the most effective preventative of foreign invasions.

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.

In 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.

First of all, what we [in USA] need to understand is the middle class is what makes us different and exceptional. Every country has rich people, but what has made us different throughout history is that we have this broad-based vibrant middle class.

In my freshman year of college, when a male professor asked the class, "Who here identifies as a feminist?" Only one girl raised her hand, and the rest of us just sat there. He basically just shamed us for the rest of the class   -   in a constructive way. He went around the room and said to each girl, "Why didn't you raise your hand? Feminism means men and women deserve the same rights, and that the balance in the world is currently tilted in men's favour.

The truth is, the liberal policies of the elite class have done little to improve the lot of those who depend so much on them. In America's black communities, where the goodies have been flowing for decades, rather than seeing improvements in terms of upward mobility, we are seeing deteriorating family structure, increases in violent crimes, growing poverty, and growing dependence. Even with such a blatant record of failure, there is slavish devotion to the elite class who continue to promise more goodies in exchange for votes.

The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency--indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman--but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.

In 1980, when I graduated from high school, my goal was to be on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson at least once before our ten-year class reunion. Our class reunion was in June of 1990, and I was on 'The Tonight Show' in April 1990, so I made it by a few months.

Bernie Sanders talks about socialism in Scandinavia, and he's correct to point to the huge victories the working class has won there through struggle, such as socialized medicine, free college education, and paid family leave. But if you talk to working people in Sweden or Norway today, you will find out that many of those past gains have been eroded and some virtually eliminated, including massive under-funding of healthcare and other public services and a return to for-profit systems that are unaffordable to working class people.

Besides P.E., geography was my best class in high school. I was in this gifted class when I was younger, and it was wicked!

I was always getting in trouble because I was the class clown but I always made teacher laugh. I remember I thought I was going to fail that class but I ended up passing it and I really think it was only because I was good entertainment for her.

Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings.

My thing in high school was being the tallest kid in class. Always. I was always the tallest kid in class.

We want to emulate the educated class, even if we don't think of educated people as a class these days.

When I grew up in Tanzania, I went to school with kids who were blind and deaf, and we were all in one class. There wasn't a different class or teacher for them, so they didn't learn anything. I'm hoping to organize a school to train teachers to help children with disabilities. It's my future goal. I want to move back to Tanzania and do that eventually.

No class of Americans, so far as I know, has ever objected . . . to any amount of governmental meddling if it appeared to benefit that particular class.

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account.

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.

Governments, 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.

Class is the most taboo subject in America. The American media would rather talk about race or perversion or anything else considered taboo before class.

You want to be upper class, you want to be first class, but when the plane crash, everybody dead.

When the women's movement began, it was a middle-class phenomenon. Certainly, black women had other stuff to think about in the '60s besides a women's movement. Working-class women were slow to get into it.

Luckily, I remembered something Malcolm Cowley had taught us at Stanford - perhaps the most important lesson a writing class (not a writer, understand, but a class) can ever learn. 'Be gentle with one another's efforts,' he often admonished us. 'Be kind and considerate with your criticism. Always remember that it's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.'

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

When I was growing up, you were supposed to marry and therefore didn't plan ahead. Planning ahead is one of the few reliable measures of class in the sense that rich people plan for generations forward and poor people plan for Saturday night, and by that measure, women have been lower class. We were less likely to plan ahead because we're more likely to think that who we marry and our children are going to dictate our plans.

I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up.

The 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.

Because you look at it, you know, and there's basically one set of rules that protect that industrial ruling class. That's what the governments do, that's what the religions do. They protect the interests of that industrial ruling class.

I take a jazz class and I also take just a regular exercise class with a man who gives me acupressure treatments. It's just stretching and elongating the muscles.

The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers

The 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.

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.

The future economic success of Silicon Valley will be contingent on whether we have a good quality of life. World-class workers will only want to come to a world-class living environment.

I came from a small town and at school in one class there was me, a member from Depeche Mode and someone who went on to join The Cure. That was all in one class of 30 kids.