Class quotes
4.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside class — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
""[Lawyers who file class-action securities suits] is not a group you would want to marry into your family. "That said, more than half the time the people being sued by the Lerach firm are guilty of outrageous conduct. The problem is, they don't mind (suing) the other half. They are an equal opportunity litigator.""
"Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery."
"Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government."
"He who is by nature not his own but another's man is by nature a slave."
"It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits"
"It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be."
"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."
"All great men come out of the middle classes."
"We Americans have a chance to become someday a nation in which all racial stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically."
"I eat everything, that's a problem. I don't have discipline. My favorite dish is the Caribbean. Meat, rice, lots of grains. But I do like to do exercises. Lately, I've been having capoeira classes and lots of cardiovascular exercises, such as jogging and cycling."
"Self-discipline is the No. 1 delineating factor between the rich, the middle class and the poor."
"The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them."
"The rich are those who play to win. The middle class plays not to lose."
"This erosion of the middle class is happening all over the place. The opening of a wider gap between rich and poor is always accompanied by such a process."
"There is no class of people so hard to manage in a state, as those whose intentions are honest, but whose consciences are bewitched."
"Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem."
"It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served."
"The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing."
"Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor."
"Celebrate my death for the good times I've had, For the work that I've done and the friends that I've made. Celebrate my death, of whom it could be said, "She was a working class woman, and a red.""
