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Class Quotes

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Class Quotes

“Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.”

PeopleDoeAmericaIndividualNationsClassReaderUniversalAbsolutesPressesNewspapersPoorestUniversal Education
Book:The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
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“One wants recovery to start from the bottom, and the other wants it to start from the top. I don't know which is right. I've never heard of anybody suggesting that they might start it in the middle, so I hereby make that suggestion. To start recovery halfway between the two, because it's the middle class that does everything anyhow. But I don't know anything about it.”

KnowsWantDoeTwoMightPoliticsClassHeardMiddleBottomRecoveryMiddle ClassSuggestionsHalfwaySuggesting
Book:Radio broadcasts of Will Rogers
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“American liberty is being destroyed by Marxist doctrines that explain society in terms of hegemonic and oppressed groups - whether classes, races or genders - fighting for suzerainty. In these societies spun out of Marxist theorizing, good will does not exist, only the material interests of warring groups. Morality resides in the oppressed, but if the oppressed succeed in becoming hegemonic, their claim to moral supremacy evaporates.”

IfsDoeFightingTermInterestRaceLibertyMoralClassGroupsMaterialsBecomingMoralitySucceedClaimsGenderDoctrineDestroyedOppressedGood WillSupremacyMarxistSpunAmerican Liberty
Author:Paul Craig Roberts
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“Sometimes having no script, having no idea what is going to happen next, having no map, might be the way to go. Because life just happens, and when it does, how you handle it will teach you more about who you are than any class or test ever can. The best preparation for the rest of your life is, maybe, no preparation at all. Dive right in. Make mistakes. Break a few rules. Wing it.”

WayDoeIdeasSometimesMightHappensLife IsNextMistakeClassTeachBreakTestsWho You AreWingsScriptsHandlePreparationNo IdeaMaking MistakesMapsRest Of Your Life
Book:From What I Remember
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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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“The nature of women's oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children - we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”

WayChildrenDoeSeemsFoundWealthSleepRaceClassUniqueAccessSignificantOppressionGutsTerritoryOppressedMachineryTangled
Author:Andrea Dworkin
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“From the internal reality, by which I means the totality of psychological experiences, it [science] actually separates us. Art, for example, deals with many more aspects of this internal reality than does science, which confines itself deliberately and by convention to the study of one very limited class of experiences the experiences of sense.”

MeanDoeArtRealityDealsClassStudyExampleAspectPsychologicalInternalsConventionsTotality
Book:Collected Works: Do what you will
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“Americans ... do not naturally apply the term "bourgeois" to themselves, or to anyone else for that matter. They do like to call themselves middle class, but that does not carry with it any determinate spiritual content. ... The term "middle class" does not have any of the many opposites that bourgeois has, such as aristocrat, saint, hero, or artist - all good.”

DoeMatterSpiritualArtistTermClassMiddleHeroOppositesSaintMiddle ClassBourgeois
Author:Allan Bloom
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“Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end up by becoming a bellyacher, constantly complaining because the public does not rush forward at once to proclaim him.”

ShouldDoeArtEndsArtistGivenClassPovertyMiddleBecomingComfortableTrainingShould HaveComplainingMiddle Class
Book:A Story Teller's Story: The Tale of an American Writer's Journey Through His Own Imaginative World and Through the World of Facts, with Many of His Experiences and Impressions Among Other Writers--told in Many Notes--in Four Books--and an Epilogue
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“Not only does a journey transport us over enormous distances, it also causes us to move a few degrees up or down in the social scale. It displaces us physically and also for better or for worse takes us out of our class context, so that the colour and flavour of certain places cannot be dissociated from the always unexpected social level on which we find ourselves in experiencing them.”

DoeMovingCertainSocialCausesLevelsClassJourneyDegreesDistanceScalesEnormousColourUnexpectedTransportFlavour
Book:Tristes Tropiques
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“I don't believe there is one woman within the confines of this state who does not believe in birth control. I never met one. That is, I never met one who thought that she should be kept in ignorance of contraceptive methods. Many I have met who valued the knowledge they possessed, but thought there were certain other classes who would be better kept in ignorance. The old would protect the young. The rich would keep the poor in ignorance. The good would keep their knowledge from the bad, the strong from the weak.”

ShouldBelieveDoeStatesWould BeYoungCertainStrongPoorClassRichIgnoranceBirthMetsProtectWeakMethodDon't BelievePossessedOne WomanBirth ControlContraceptives
Book:Crystal Eastman on women and revolution
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“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

WellsDoeCharacterAmericaIndividualBlackTermCommunityResultsExistenceClassEconomicMiddleEffectsCenturyAbsolutesAdversitySlaveDiscriminationMiddle ClassProsperousLingeringRacial Discrimination
Author:David Horowitz
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“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.”

LongDoeMatterFactsRunningAgePastLostForceExistenceClassPromiseSucceedDemandFunctionStructureObjectivesFraudArtificialStableLong RunsPersistRulingTotalitarianismDisbeliefClingingSchizophreniaAlterationsObjective Truth
Author:George Orwell
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“It does not try to reach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords of its own. It seeks to away with classes, to make the best that has been taught and known in the world current everywhere, to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely--nourished, and not bound by them.”

MenWorldTryingMayDoeHas BeensMadeIdeasUseLightCultureWinningLevelsKnownClassTaughtReadyJudgmentBoundsCurrentsAtmosphereInferiorsSweetnessSects
Author:Matthew Arnold
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“men are not born with a faculty for the universal and ... women are not reduced at birth to the particular. The universal has been, and is continually, at every moment, appropriated by men. It does not happen by magic, it must be done. It is an act, a criminal act, perpetrated by one class against another. It is an act carried out at the level of concepts, philosophy, politics.”

MenDoeHas BeensDonePhilosophyMomentsHappensBornLevelsClassMagicParticularBirthConceptsUniversalCriminalsFaculty
Book:The Straight Mind: And Other Essays
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“There's no question that the black middle class has benefited greatly by the civil rights movement. But there is a large black underclass that does not have access to jobs. If there's no clear road to income and status except crime, we should expect social problems. You can't solve this problem without addressing the economic issues, and the same is true with gender.”

IfsShouldDoeProblemJobsSocialBlackClassIssuesClearRightsEconomicMiddleCrimeMovementGenderSolveAccessIncomeCivil RightsMiddle ClassCivil Rights MovementSocial ProblemsEconomic Issues
Author:Betty Friedan
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“I was lucky enough to go to college for four years. At what was supposedly a hippie school with no tests and no grades, blah blah blah, I wasn't learning that. I was taking photography classes. That stuff just wasn't talked about. It was like, "Does this picture have the right about of grey in it?" It wasn't even an art school. It was a state-run school.”

YearsDoeArtStatesEnoughRunningSchoolStuffClassFourCollegeLuckyPhotographyTestsGradesFour YearsGreyHippieArt SchoolBlah
Author:Kathleen Hanna
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“Motherhood goes back in history to a time when a father had no way of knowing his children. Fatherhood only became known when class patriarchal society had established itself and imposed monogamous marriage on women. Motherhood is like sun and rain and plants, a quality and product of nature which does not require laws or systems in order to exist.”

WayChildrenDoeLawOrderFatherQualityKnownClassSunKnowingProductsRainPlantMotherhoodFatherhoodPatriarchal SocietySun And Rain
Author:Nawal El Saadawi
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“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.”

GivingDoeOrderClassDuesSupremeHidingSubmitDictatorshipProletariatPhilistines
Book:The defence of terrorism: terrorism and communism; a reply to Karl Kautsky
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“A psychologically engrossing novel about the homes we make-in our houses, in our neighborhoods, and in the hearts of our loved ones. Laken takes on that great unspoken American subject-class-and does so with frankness, acuity and surpassing feeling. DREAM HOUSE is a memorable debut novel from a fully mature talent.”

HeartDoeFeelingsHomeDreamHouseClassNovelSubjectsTalentMemorableNeighborhoodMatureLoved OnesUnspokenDebutSurpassingFranknessDream House
Author:Peter Ho Davies
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“My first experience with football was not very good because I didn't plan on playing football. I was just playing hookie one day and I was a sophomore and decided not to go to class. And the principal - normally he does his rounds and I thought I had him down pretty good where he was going to be - he sort of walked up behind me and scared me. He noticed I could run real fast. So that's how I got introduced to football.”

FirstsDoeRealRunningBehindsClassPlansFootballOne DayDecidedRoundsVery GoodScaredPrincipalPlaying FootballSophomore
Author:Jerry Rice
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“European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.”

WayDoeHas BeensAmericaChoicesCausesWonderClassCostActivityIntellectualTraditionLettersDividedHonorableVocationUneasyAmerican Society
Author:James A. Baldwin
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“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”

MenLooksPersonsDoeIdeasStatesGovernmentIndividualChurchClassDemocracyGreaterOughtBirthPureOppositesRegardPropertyAccidentsMeritHolinessEtcInternalsAllowingReverseLook At MeDisregard
Book:Golden Hours with Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does.”

MenDoeCountryFactsAmericaWonderClassMiddleMoralityEqualGoodnessTraditionVoteClaimsNotionSillySuperiorsArrogancePurityMiddle ClassCan NotMiraculousConceitExaltedSuffrageAmerican WomanAccentuateSuffragistsSnobbishness
Book:Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926
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“Women of a selected class, by the use of slaves and servants have become inactive, the mere recipients of values, no longer creators but "feeding on unearned wealth." This hurts their nature and debases the social fabric. If a woman does no labor in her home which could properly make her self-supporting outside that home she is in duty bound to do something outside her home to justify her claim to support.”

IfsDoeSelfUseHomeValuesSocialHurtWealthClassSupportDutyLaborClaimsSlaveMereBoundsCreatorServantJustifyFabricFeedingSelected
Book:Woman's Share in Social Culture
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“Fir : it contains a great deal of air and fire with very little moisture and the earthy, so that, as its natural properties are of the lighter class, it is not heavy. Hence, its consistence being naturally stiff, it does not easily bend under the load, and keeps its straightness when used in the framework. But it contains so much heat that it generates and encourages decay, which spoils it; and it also kindles fire quickly because of the air in its body, which is so open that it takes in fire and so gives out a great flame.”

GivingLittlesDoeBodyUsedNaturalDealsClassFireAirPropertyHeavyFlamesHeatLoadDecayFrameworkSpoilLightersKindlesMoistureKindle Fire
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“A prejudice may be an unreasoned judgment, he [Hibben] pointed out, but an unreasoned judgment is not necessarily an illogical judgment. ... First, there are those judgments whose verification has simply dropped out of memory. ... The second type of unreasoned judgments we hold is the opinions we adopt from others ... The third class of judgments in Professor Hibben's list comprises those which have subconscious origin. The material that furnishes their support does not reach the focal point of consciousness, but psychology insists upon its existence.”

FirstsMayDoeMemoriesExistenceConsciousnessOpinionClassSupportPsychologyMaterialsTypeJudgmentThirdsPrejudiceListsProfessorsSubconsciousIllogicalVerificationFocal Point
Author:Richard M. Weaver
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“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities[who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”

FeelsDoeSchoolForceSocialParentDifficultCommunityClassEnvironmentDemandApproachNegativeInstitutionsStructureContactAliensAgencyMinoritiesOverwhelmingEntitledDominantNormHostileInitialsDisagreementNegotiatingSocial ServiceLower Class
Author:Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
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“Religion in America . . . Must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions for that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it . . . I do know know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion - for who can search the human heart? - But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”

IfsKnowsHumansHeartDoeCountryWholeUseAmericaPoliticalCertainNationsPartyOpinionClassCitizensRepublicanTasteInstitutionsSincerePeculiarIndispensableHuman HeartMaintenanceImpartFacilitatePolitical Institutions
Author:Alexis de Tocqueville
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“U.S. domestic drug policy does not carry out its stated goals, and policymakers are well aware of that. If it isn't about reducing substance abuse, what is it about? It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.”

IfsWellsDoeActionCertainSocialGoalClassClearRecordsDangerousPolicyDrugAbuseHistoricalCurrentsTechniqueSubstanceReducingSubstance AbuseSocial ControlDrug Policy
Author:Noam Chomsky
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