Class quotes
4.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside class — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became."
"State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day."
"Policies are designed to undermine working class organization and the reason is not only the unions fight for workers' rights, but they also have a democratizing effect. These are institutions in which people without power can get together, support one another, learn about the world, try out their ideas, initiate programs, and that is dangerous. That's like a referendum in Greece. It is dangerous to allow that."
"With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it."
"The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass."
"A society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure, and to another all the burdens of work, dooms both classes to spiritual sterility."
"The parasites live where the great have little secret sores."
"The way to connect with voters on the plan is to simply give the facts. Fifty per cent of taxpayers pay 97 per cent of the taxes. By most people's standards, that's already fair. The President is playing the class warfare card because he knows that a lot of people may never hear that particular fact. But it's a fact."
"You've got a lifetime to mull over the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness." He spoke every sentence as if he'd written it down, memorized it, and was now reciting it. "But while you were looking out the window, 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," he said, nodding toward the lake and beyond.' ~Dr. Hyde, pg 50"
"I maintain that the existing corn laws are bad, because they have given a monopoly of food to the landed interest over every other class and over every other interest in the kingdom."
"We have no parties standing in opposition to each other, just as we have no class of capitalists and a class of workers exploited by capitalists in opposition to each other."
"It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship."
"There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class."
"Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead... that I'd finally found my sport."
"With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice."
"My parents were determined to move into the middle class."
"If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce."
"Freedom for the working class!"
"I went to engineering school, I went to physics class. I said, 'Screw this, I don't want to be here. I'd much rather be at a club playing music."
"You must drop all your democracy. You must not believe in ''the people.'' One class is no better than another. It must be a case of Wisdom, or Truth. Let the working classes be working classes. That is the truth. There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a Ruler: a Kaiser: no Presidents and democracies."
