Social Classes Quotes

The last time everyone loved or at least liked everyone was when the world had a population of about 4.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Life curses some poor people with the love of luxury, while it blesses some with the very same thing.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Avoid those who seek friends in order to maintain a certain social status or to open doors they would not otherwise be able to approach.

~ Paulo Coelho

Most people do not mind having a house that is smaller and/or a car that is cheaper than their neighbours’, as long as they each earn and have more money than their neighbours, and, equally important, their neighbours know that.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The middle class were invented to give the poor hope; the poor, to make the rich feel special; the rich, to humble the middle class.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Whether it is big or small, the size of a poor man’s yard incessantly reminds him that he is poor.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Music is the 'pure' art par excellence. It says nothing and has nothing to say. Never really having an expressive function, it is opposed to drama, which even in its most refined forms still bears a social message and can only be 'put over' on the basis of an immediate and profound affinity with the values and expectations of its audience. The theatre divides its public and divides itself. The Parisian opposition between right-bank and left-bank theatr, bourgeois theatre and avant-garde theatre, is inextricably aesthetic and political.

~ Pierre Bourdieu

Cultural and religious traditions that forbid cross-cultural unions prevent peace on earth. Instead of rejoicing that our sons and daughters are heart-driven and love other humans outside of their familiar religious, social or cultural domains, we punish and insult them. This is wrong. Honor killings are not honorable by God. They are driven by ignorance and ego and nothing more. The Creator favors the man who loves over the man who hates. If you think God will punish you or your child for allowing them to marry outside of your tribe or faith, then you do not know God. Love is his religion and the light of love sees no walls. Anybody who unconditionally loves another human being for the goodness of their heart and nothing more is already on the right side of God.

~ Suzy Kassem

One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children

~ Ron Rash

For their holidays: the rich’s kids travel the world, the poor’s kids roam around their grandparents’ yard.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

For their holidays: the rich go see the world, the poor go see their parents.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents.

~ Ivan Illich

We, who were reduced to eating on the sidewalk , were suddenly elevated in status by this man's misery. We were the aristocrats and he the beggar. It flattered us. We were superbly above him and the comedy gave us a delusion of high self-respect. In a while, the magnanimity of the rich would complete the picture. We would feed our scraps to the poor.

~ John Howard Griffin

Poor people do not go on holiday, they go home.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The most impoverished peasant can be delighted by the opening of the first spring flower, and the most wealthy aristocrat can curse the day he was born because of some petty offense to his sensibilities. She is a very wise woman. To achieve serenity we have to view life not as it is measured by the world around us but as we ourselves measure it. We must accept that the scales are not at all equal.

~ Emma Wildes

Juice is a poor man’s dessert.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Peanut butter is a poor man’s marmalade.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When rich, being poor seems *adventurous.*

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Man is divided into two categories, men and supermen. Men are taught that all men are equal. Supermen think that they are the only men.

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule.

~ William Graham Sumner

The rich spend their life living, the poor spend their life making a living.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Class analysis can thus function not simply as part of scientific theory of interests and conflicts, but of an emancipatory theory of alternatives and social justice as well. Even if socialism is off the historical agenda, the idea of countering the exploitative logic of capitalism is not.

~ Erik Olin Wright

I wish we had met away from all these battles. I wish we had met in a land of peace without social classes and with no conflicts. I wish we had met in prehistoric times wearing cranberry leaves. I wish we had met when there were no disagreements about our bodies and no doctrinal differences. I wish we had met when the veil was not an issue and when there were no shaving blades, no hair colors and no perfumes to hide your natural smell. I wish we have met when there were no shoes to coerce our steps, no fashion and socks brands to put each of us in a certain social class. I wish we have met when there were no cars and no traffic. I wish we have met when there were no battles to be forced to see you as an unarmed knight with the heresy of currencies.

~ Jihad Eltabey