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Class Quotes

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Class Quotes

“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. And yet I am not so opposed to capitalism that I have failed to see its relative merits. It started out with a noble and high motive, to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it falls victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has outlived its usefulness. It has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”

KnowsGivingHumansTodayFallClassImagineEconomicTheoryMassCapitalismVictimTradeNobleBlockLuxuryMeritMotiveRelativeMonopolyUsefulnessEconomic Theory
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Contrary to vulgar legend the lives of great ballerinas are not entirely given up to a few minutes of graceful movement every night followed by champagne drunk out of their toeshoes till dawn, in the company of financiers ... no, most of their time is spent in filthy rehearsal halls, inhaling dust, or else in class, daily, year in year out, practicing, practicing even after they are already prima ballerinas.”

YearsNightGivenCompanyClassMinutesMovementContraryDrunkDustDawnHallsLegendsBalletEvery NightVulgarRehearsalGiven UpChampagneFilthyBallerinaFinanciers
Book:Death in the Fifth Position
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“Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.”

HumansHas BeensWholeShowsSeemsActionLife IsCausesWealthResultsClassPovertyEconomicConditionsSubjectsCrimeBehaviorClaimsPropertyComplexesEndlessStatisticsImperfectHuman BehaviorDistributionHeredityDistribution Of Wealth
Author:Clarence Darrow
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“It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.”

IfsHardCertainSocialClassRightsPridePropertyPrivilegeDebtConvincedConcreteProperty RightsSocial ClassSpecialty
Book:It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future
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“Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.”

MenFirstsChildrenStatesActionPoliticalOrderCausesRealizingCommonLeaderEnemyClassWorstMastersPoliticianMen And WomenCapitalismDirectMachinesBetrayalRidiculousCrushLabourBetrayRulingCreepsPillarsWorst EnemyPolitical LeadersLeashesRedressDirect Action
Author:Emma Goldman
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“It appears then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.”

EnjoyClassConditionsIndependentCrisisProsperityProductionsPermitRelativeCapitalistWorking ClassHarbinger
Book:Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: .. Karl Marx: Capital vol.II
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“You talk about making this article cheaper by reducing its price in the market from 8 d. to 6 d. But suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your country weaker against a foreign foe; suppose you have demoralized thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and have sown discontent between one class of society and another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after all.”

CountryClassFellowsDearArticlesFoeReducingDiscontentCheaperDoing YouCountrymenDemoralizedClasses Of Society
Book:Specimens of the table talk
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“The only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is as a sort of second-class historian of the age he lives in. The "reality" he missed by writing about imaginary people, he gains by being able to build a reality more nearly out of his own factual experience than a plain historian or biographer can.”

PeopleGivingWritingBookRealityAgeAbleClassGainsEntertainmentExcuseNovelistsHistorianImaginaryFactualBiographersVicarious
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“There are two kinds of second class men in business. There is the man who puts money first and service second. There is the man who puts service first and money second, who never has any money. The first class man in business is the man who is made up out of rolling the other two kinds into one man and working them together.”

MenFirstsKindMadeTwoTogetherBusinessClassHe ManOne ManRollingFirst Class
Book:The House of Twenty Seven Gardens
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“I was born and raised in the University of Chicago area and had an uneventful middle-class Catholic childhood. I had a heavy Catholic upbringing and Catholicism is terrible - it's the reason there were slaves. Mass every morning at seven o'clock during Lent. It's a totally negative, man-made religion.”

MenMadeReasonBornClassMorningChildhoodMiddleTerribleMassAreasNegativeCatholicSlaveRaisedSevenUniversityHeavyClockMiddle ClassCatholicismChicagoEvery MorningUpbringingBorn And Raised
Author:Chaka Khan
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“Why, I say, that to tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I entirely disclaim it; but I ask you to protect the rights and interests of labour generally in the first place, by allowing no free imports from countries which meet you with countervailing duties; and, in the second place, with respect to agricultural produce, to compensate the soil for the burdens from which other classes are free by an equivalent duty. This is my view of what is called "protection."”

FirstsCountryAsksInterestCommunityViewsClassRightsProduceDutyProtectTaxesAdvantageBurdenProtectionSoilLabourAllowingImportsPlunderSecond Place
Author:Benjamin Disraeli
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“It does not follow from the separation of planning and doing in the analysis of work that the planner and the doer should be two different people. It does not follow that the industrial world should be divided into two classes of people: a few who decide what is to be done, design the job, set the pace, rhythm and motions, and order others about; and the many who do what and as they are told.”

PeopleWorldShouldDoeTwoDifferentDoneJobsOrderClassDesignSeparationPlanningRhythmAnalysisDividedPaceDifferent PeoplesDoersPlanners
Book:People and Performance
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“This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new "class conflict" between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work... or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work - still abysmally low - will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people.”

PeopleWayGivingStillsChallengesAbilityClassEconomicDangerDependsConflictLowsDignityMajorityWorkersProductivityIncomeTraditionalDecentMinoritiesManualsThis SocietyKnowledge WorkersClass ConflictNew ClassManual Work
Author:Peter Drucker
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“We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.”

KnowsMenYearsLittlesTodaySpeakClassFiveTomorrowYears AgoLaborAccountsTwentiesSlaveYesterdayPermanentFive YearsSouthernBetter OffTwenty FiveLaborers
Book:Lincoln on Democracy
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“I go through the text making sure I haven't used any big words. If I find any fancy adjectives have crept in, I replace them with small words like 'nice' and 'big'. I've liked these words ever since I was told not to use them in English class at school. After that, I check that the sentences are short so as people won't get confused and I shorten all the chapters so they won't get bored. I can't read anything complicated these days, my attention span is too short. Everyone else probably feels the same.”

PeopleIfsFeelsI CanUseBigsSchoolUsedAttentionClassNiceHavensComplicatedSentencesChecksThese DaysBoredConfusedFancyChaptersToo ShortAdjectivesAttention SpanEnglish ClassSmall Words
Author:Martin Millar
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“Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.”

PeopleMenJoyMotherLosesClassAtheismSubjectsSonBenefitsSoldierCowardRulersUnfortunateSensibilityMarsProsperousPledgeFidelityInsipid
Author:François-René de Chateaubriand
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“Ballet is the repetitive training of the body for the purpose of executing steps in traditional fashion. It is tied to and bound by the past. It is a disciplined beauty consciously preserved in the image of the old days in societies that were class-conscious and appreciative of elitist physical expertise.”

BodyPastPurposeStepsClassFashionTrainingConsciousBoundsTraditionalBalletTiedExpertiseOld DaysAppreciativeRepetitiveElitistExecuting
Author:Shirley MacLaine
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“Concentration of ownership in the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well.”

WellsMightInterestAttitudeClassShareMediaPositionPerceptionGainsExpectedAspirationConcentrationElitesOwnershipPrivilegedAssociatesReflectingCommentators
Book:Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
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“Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class.”

SeemsMoralClassImagineMiddleFashionStyleClothesIdealsPostsRevolutionaryRisingAppropriateMiddle ClassElegantVictorianEpochArtificialityEmpresses
Author:James Laver
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“I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class's teacher, when the class got to Evangeline , kept echoing in my ears: "We're coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don't be babies and start counting the pages." I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages.”

LongDreamGirlClassBoysTeacherBabyBedPagesEarsLaysGradesCountingBoy And GirlEighth Grade
Book:A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables
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