Class quotes

Class

4.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Class quotes (page 10 of 214)

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Rosa Luxemburg Political Theorist, Activist
Class

"The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility."

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Karl Marx Philosopher, Economist
Class

"In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe."

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Noam Chomsky Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
Class

"We don't use the term 'working class' here because it's a taboo term. You're supposed to say 'middle class,' because it helps diminish the understanding that there's a class war going on."

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Poet, Playwright, Novelist
Class

"Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like."

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John Hume Politician, Nobel Laureate
Class

"Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn't borrow from banks."

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Michael Lewis Author, Journalist
Class

"The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job."

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Barack Obama Politician
Class

"Every single thing I`ve done, from the Affordable Care Act to pushing to raise the minimum wage, to making sure that young people are able to go to college and get good job training, to what we`re pushing now in terms of sick paid leave,everything I do has been focused on how do we make sure the middle class is getting a fair deal."

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Bell Hooks Author, Feminist, Social Activist
Class

"We live in a world with serious class complexes. It is one thing to be a college student with loan debts and another thing to be just dirt poor for your entire life. The challenge is to come up with more complex understandings of where we are, more global awareness of what connects Americans with what is happening with suffering and oppressed people all around the world."

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Oscar Wilde Writer
Class

"Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization."

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Jim Carrey Actor, Comedian
Class

"My teacher in the seventh grade told me that if I didn't fool around during class, I could have 15 minutes at the end of the day to do a comedy routine. Instead of bugging everybody, I'd figure out my routine. And at the end of the day, I'd get to perform in front of my entire class. I thought it was really smart of her. It's amazing how important that was."

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Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Leader
Class

"The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking."

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Quinn Cummings Actress, Author
Class

"All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged."

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Barack Obama Politician
Class

"In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again."

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Confucius Philosopher
Class

"Exemplary people concern themselves with virtue, small people concern themselves with territory. The ruling class thinks of punishment, the lower classes hope for benevolence."

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Aristotle Philosopher
Class

"Every man should be responsible to others, nor should anyone be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man. But the principle of responsibility secures that which is the greatest good in states; the right persons rule and are prevented from doing wrong, and the people have their due. It is evident that this is the best kind of democracy, and why? because the people are drawn from a certain class."

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Robert Louis Stevenson Author, Poet
Class

"The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation."

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Mahatma Gandhi Political Leader
Class

"I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded."

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Lana Del Rey Singer-Songwriter
Class

"I wanted to be part of a high-class scene of musicians. It was half-inspired because I didn't have many friends, and I was hoping that I would meet people and fall in love and start a community around me, the way they used to do in the '60s."

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Karl Marx Philosopher, Economist
Class

"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, posses however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other."

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