Class Quotes

Class, she reminded herself, was the real marker in America.

~ Paul Russell

The Church, like the monarchy, was a valuable bastion of defense against the dangerous alliance of atheistical philosophy with political radicalism. The Bible taught the poorer orders that their lowly path had been allotted to them by the hand of God, and the Church was there to make quite certain they understood that.

~ C.s. Harris

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

~ Mao Zedong

The violence of a lower-class man may indeed express rage, but it is aimed not at society but at the asshole who scraped his car and dissed him in front of a crowd.

~ Steven Pinker

Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator.

~ J.g. Ballard

She transcends her sport, which is what any sport needs...And she does it while smiling the whole time. It's kind of a joke, but then again it's not, especially if you're a male pro trailing in her wake. To have this woman in the middle of such a suffer fest out there crushing people and smiling all the way...

~ Lance Armstrong

...you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over be present out there

~ John Green

Modern invention has been a great leveler. A machine may operate far more quickly than a political or economic measure to abolish privilege and wipe out the distinctions of class or finance.

~ Ivor Brown

In recent years a smaller share of young adults has been employed than at any time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking such trends in 1948. So it's not surprising that this generation of youthful protesters has a different focus for their grievances: the economy, stupid. But notice the targets they've chosen to demonize. It's all about class, not age. It's 1% versus 99%, not young versus old. Occupy Wall Street, not Occupy Leisure World.

~ Pew Research Center

There was a seminar for advanced students in Zürich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn’t say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann.

~ George Pólya

Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No teacher ever tried to prod him.

~ R.k. Narayan

The best don’t stick around when you treat them poorly, only the desperate do.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You are in favour of the common people?” said Dragon mildly.The common people?” said Vimes. “They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I’ve got to be on their side.

~ Terry Pratchett

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas...

~ E.m. Forster

A democracy can only be produced if a majority movement is built. The guerilla strategy depends on a collapse of will in the ruling class to produce the social crisis out of which revolution occurs, whether the majority favors it or not.

~ Anarchist Communist Collective

Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

~ Benjamin Spock

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell...

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

The achievement gap between children from high income and low income families is roughly 30-40% larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25 years ago. The class gap among students entering kindergarten was two to three times higher than the racial gap.

~ Robert D. Putnam

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.

~ Helen Keller

In a society not characterised by class exploitation, the relationship between the processes of surplus-production and reproduction of labour-power is qualitatively distinct from that characterising societies in which exploitation dominates...surplus-labour is identified by the nature of its contribution to social reproduction, not by the fact that it is provately appropriated.

~ Lise Vogel

People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.

~ Jason Read

From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

~ George Orwell

When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.

~ Wendell Phillips

All men are born free: just not for long.

~ John Le Carré

We are the same, you and I. Whether samurai or night-hawk, the Suruga Dainagon or member of the Toudouza, it makes no difference. My sword is the proof....

~ Takayuki Yamaguchi

There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw to-day, so come the Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors.

~ Richard Llewellyn

The world was created for Mankind, not for some of mankind.

~ Richard Llewellyn

When you're reaching the end of the semester and you just wanna die. Coffin Making 101 is literally killing me.-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz

~ Karen Quan

I love having to attend the one class that is being taught by a professor who feels that their class is the only class being taught at the University and gives nothing but busy work.

~ Heather Chapple

Josh Funk and Hunter Fraser: we haven't been in touch in years, but you made me feel like the funniest kid in the world. I would stay up late on school nights to write things to try to make you laugh the next day in class, and you inspired the one piece of advice on writing that I've ever felt qualified to give: write for the kid sitting next to you.

~ B.j. Novak

Be present in this class. And then, when it's over, be present out there.

~ John Green

More than any other colonial founder, Oglethorpe made himself one of the people, promoting collective effort.

~ Nancy Isenberg

No emotion was supposed to cross the great divide of class. Affection could erase all hierarchy; in this was the danger, and the delight.

~ Damon Galgut

It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that is is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included.

~ Evelyn Waugh

Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow.

~ William Shakespeare

By adherence to a special set of rules, the child of the shabby-genteel can sometimes leap across the time which has passed by his family and function in the real world without doing violence to the hopes his mother held out for him. But those who cannot live within this pattern are the freaks and poets, and they travel a different road to peace.

~ Murray Kempton

There is only one class of men, the privileged class

~ Albert Camus

To be white, or straight, or male, or middle class is to be simultaneously ubiquitious and invisible. You’re everywhere you look, you’re the standard against which everyone else is measured. You’re like water, like air. People will tell you they went to see a “woman doctor” or they will say they went to see “the doctor.” People will tell you they have a “gay colleague” or they’ll tell you about a colleague. A white person will be happy to tell you about a “Black friend,” but when that same person simply mentions a “friend,” everyone will assume the person is white. Any college course that doesn’t have the word “woman” or “gay” or “minority” in its title is a course about men, heterosexuals, and white people. But we call those courses “literature,” “history” or “political science.”This invisibility is political.

~ Michael S. Kimmel

We still tell each other that we are lucky to be alive, when our being alive has almost nothing to do with luck, but with geography, pigmentation, and international exchange rates.

~ Joseph O'connor

What is key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief — despite all evidence to the contrary — that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one’s character. By extension, the failure of a race or ethnic group to move up reflects very poorly on the group as a whole.

~ Michelle Alexander