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Classism Quotes

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Classism Quotes

“Women who were lesbians, of all races and classes, were at the forefront of the radicalization of contemporary female resistance to patriarchy in part because this group had their sexual preference already placed themselves outside the domain of heterosexist privilege and protection, both in the home and in the workplace. No matter their class, they were social outcasts.”

PovertyFeminismSocial JusticeClassism
Book:Where We Stand: Class Matters
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“It is human nature to avoid being concerned with the welfare of the less privileged. So often I have observed those a little more fortunate walk by with stiff backs and upturned noses, as though they are infallible, removed from the suffering of humanity. So often the more fortunate assume an air of ridicule and contempt towards men of humbler birth. Out island is not free from discrimination, although it may be subtle and disguised. If you escape the race barrier, there is still that of higher income, and in some circles, that of a high school education.”

PovertyDiscriminationClassism
Book:I, Vagabond
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“We should always be clear that animal exploitation is wrong because it involves speciesism. And speciesism is wrong because, like racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, classism, and all other forms of human discrimination, speciesism involves violence inflicted on members of the moral community where that infliction of violence cannot be morally justified. But that means that those of us who oppose speciesism necessarily oppose discrimination against humans. It makes no sense to say that speciesism is wrong because it is like racism (or any other form of discrimination) but that we do not have a position about racism. We do. We should be opposed to it and we should always be clear about that.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsHealthRacismSlaveryClimate ChangeVulnerableGlobal WarmingSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationExtinctionVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“I am opposed to animal welfare campaigns for two reasons. First, if animal use cannot be morally justified, then we ought to be clear about that, and advocate for no use. Although rape and child molestation are ubiquitous, we do not have campaigns for “humane” rape or “humane” child molestation. We condemn it all. We should do the same with respect to animal exploitation. Second, animal welfare reform does not provide significant protection for animal interests. Animals are chattel property; they are economic commodities. Given this status and the reality of markets, the level of protection provided by animal welfare will generally be limited to what promotes efficient exploitation. That is, we will protect animal interests to the extent that it provides an economic benefit.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsHealthRacismSlaveryClimate ChangeVulnerableWelfareGlobal WarmingSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationExtinctionVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“The notion that we should promote “happy” or “humane” exploitation as “baby steps” ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The “happy” meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that. We would never advocate for “humane” or "happy” human slavery, rape, genocide, etc. So, if we believe that animals matter morally and that they have an interest not only in not suffering but in continuing to exist, we should not be putting our time and energy into advocating for “humane” or “happy” animal exploitation.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsHealthRacismSlaveryClimate ChangeVulnerableGlobal WarmingSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationExtinctionVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“If we take the position that an assessment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism is not possible because we are all “on our own journey,” then moral assessment becomes completely impossible or is speciesist. It is impossible because if we are all “on our own journey,” then there is nothing to say to the racist, sexist, anti-semite, homophobe, etc. If we say that those forms of discrimination are morally bad, but, with respect to animals, we are all “on our own journey” and we cannot make moral assessments about, for instance, dairy consumption, then we are simply being speciesist and not applying the same moral analysis to nonhumans that we apply to the human context.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsRacismSlaveryVulnerableSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“If we are ever going to see a paradigm shift, we have to be clear about how we want the present paradigm to shift. We must be clear that veganism is the unequivocal baseline of anything that deserves to be called an “animal rights” movement. If “animal rights” means anything, it means that we cannot morally justify any animal exploitation; we cannot justify creating animals as human resources, however “humane” that treatment may be. We must stop thinking that people will find veganism “daunting” and that we have to promote something less than veganism. If we explain the moral ideas and the arguments in favor of veganism clearly, people will understand. They may not all go vegan immediately; in fact, most won’t. But we should always be clear about the moral baseline. If someone wants to do less as an incremental matter, let that be her/his decision, and not something that we advise to do. The baseline should always be clear. We should never be promoting “happy” or “humane” exploitation as morally acceptable.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsHealthRacismSlaveryClimate ChangeVulnerableGlobal WarmingSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationExtinctionVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationParadigm ShiftPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“There are some animal advocates who say that to maintain that veganism is the moral baseline is objectionable because it is “judgmental,” or constitutes a judgment that veganism is morally preferable to vegetarianism and a condemnation that vegetarians (or other consumers of animal products) are “bad” people. Yes to the first part; no to the second. There is no coherent distinction between flesh and other animal products. They are all the same and we cannot justify consuming any of them. To say that you do not eat flesh but that you eat dairy or eggs or whatever, or that you don’t wear fur but you wear leather or wool, is like saying that you eat the meat from spotted cows but not from brown cows; it makers no sense whatsoever. The supposed “line” between meat and everything else is just a fantasy–an arbitrary distinction that is made to enable some exploitation to be segmented off and regarded as “better” or as morally acceptable. This is not a condemnation of vegetarians who are not vegans; it is, however, a plea to those people to recognize their actions do not conform with a moral principle that they claim to accept and that all animal products are the result of imposing suffering and death on sentient beings. It is not a matter of judging individuals; it is, however, a matter of judging practices and institutions. And that is a necessary component of ethical living.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsRacismSlaveryVulnerableSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“An abolitionist is, as I have developed that notion, one who (1) maintains that we cannot justify animal use, however “humane” it may be; (2) rejects welfare campaigns that seek more “humane” exploitation, or single-issue campaigns that seek to portray one form of animal exploitation as morally worse than other forms of animal exploitation (e.g., a campaign that seeks to distinguish fur from wool or leather); and (3) regards veganism, or the complete rejection of the consumption or use of any animal products, as a moral baseline. An abolitionist regards creative, nonviolent vegan education as the primary form of activism, because she understands that the paradigm will not shift until we address demand and educate people to stop thinking of animals as things we eat, wear, or use as our resources.”

LifeWisdomInspirational QuotesJusticeEducationRightsRacismSlaveryVulnerableSexismAnimalsNonviolenceExploitationVeganismPeace On EarthAbolitionAhimsaMoral ObligationPeace MakingClassismAbolitionistSpeciesismPeace MovementSentienceFrancioneAbleistMoral ImperativeNonviolence JainismHeterosexism
Author:GaryLFrancione
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“Why but Learning would not be made common. Yea but Learning cannot be too common, and the commoner the better. Why but who is not jealous, his Mistresse should be so prostitute? Yea but this Mistress is like ayre, fire, water, the more breathed the clearer; the more extended the warmer; the more drawne the sweeter. It were inhumanitie to coop her up, and worthy forfeiture to conceal here.”

LearningClassismAutodidacticismGatekeeping
Book:The Essayes of Michael, Lord of Montaigne
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“Why but Learning would not be made common. Yea but Learning cannot be too common, and the commoner the better. Why but who is not jealous, his Mistresse should be so prostitute? Yea but this Mistress is like ayre, fire, water, the more breathed the clearer; the more extended the warmer; the more drawne the sweeter. It were inhumanitie to coop her up, and worthy forfeiture to conceal her. Why but Schollers should have some privilege of preheminence. So have they: they onely are worthy Translators. Why but the vulgar should not knowe all. No, they can not for all this; nor even Schollers for much more: I would, both could and knew much more than either doth or can. Why but all would not be knowne of all. No nor can: much more we know not than we know: all know something, none know all: would all know all? they must breake ere they be so bigge.”

KnowledgeLearningAcademiaElitismClassismGatekeepingTown And Gown
Book:The Essayes of Michael, Lord of Montaigne
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“We doing these things because we’re moral, enlightened people. We’re doing these things because we are embedded within longstanding structures of institutional power, and education is just one of these functions. And it is a function with tremendous social power to oppress or to legitimize, to open or to close, to create or to calcify, to inscribe or to erase, to pardon or to punish- to dictate, or to free. The one we choose to do, we ought to choose carefully.”

PhilosophyEducationLearningCapitalismSublimeLearning QuotesEducation QuotesClass StruggleClassismPhilosophy Of Learning
Author:Alice Minium
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“The idea that we, our fathers and mothers, might be proud, hard-working and intelligent people doing something worthwhile, or even admirable, seemed to be beyond her. For a woman who saw success as being demonstrated through education, ambition, adventure and conspicuous professional achievement, we must have seemed a poor sample. I don't think anyone ever mentioned "university" in this school; no one wanted to go anyway - people that went away ceased to belong; they changed and could never really come back, we knew that in our bones. Schooling was a "way out", but we didn't want it, and we'd made our choice. Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of "going somewhere" and "doing something with your life". The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn't count for much.”

NatureClassLaborClassismNature WritingEducationation
Book:The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District
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“The whole landscape here is a complex web of relationships between farms, flocks and families. My old man can hardly spell common words, but has an encyclopaedic knowledge of landscape. I think it makes a mockery of conventional ideas about who is and isn't 'intelligent'. Some of the smartest people I have ever known are semi-literate.”

NatureClassIntelligenceClassismNature WritingEducationational
Book:The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District
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“...today class has been reduced to another ‘ism’; i.e. to another form oppression which, together with gender and race, integrate a sort of mantra, something that everyone ought to include in theorising and research, though, to my knowledge, theorising about it remains at the level of metaphors (e.g. interweaving, interaction, interconnection, etc.)”

ClassIntersectionalityClassism
Book:Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays
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“Never had I felt so much the slave as when I scoured those stone steps each afternoon. Working against time, I would wet five steps, sprinkle soap powder, then a white doctor or a nurse would come and, instead of avoiding the soppy steps, walk on them and track the dirty water onto the steps that I had already cleaned. To obviate this, I cleaned but two steps at a time, a distance over which a ten-year-old child could step. But it did no good. The white people still plopped their feet down into the dirty water and muddled the other clean steps. If I ever really hotly hated unthinking whites, it was then. Not once during my entire stay at the institute did a single white person show enough courtesy to avoid a wet step.”

Working ClassObliviousClassismObliviousness
Book:Black Boy
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“At the peak of the Civil Rights Movement, activists and others began to turn their attention to economic problems...The shift in focus served to align the goals of the Civil Rights Movement with key political goals of poor and working-class whites, who were also demanding economic reforms”

RacismCivil Rights MovementClassismCoalition
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“The choice of who we take seriously and who we ignore is deeply rooted in class disparity, with implications reaching far beyond someone's aesthetic choices or social media tattles. Our world views are crafted by those whose opportunities are fast-tracked due to wealth, and as a consequence, our perception of 'good' and 'bad' taste runs far deeper than the clothes we wear, and alters our perception of everything from feminism, well-being, and disability, to beauty and gender. Because of the way in which society idolises the rich while berating the poor, we invalidate working-class people's experiences.”

InfluencersClassismBeauty StandardsDisparity Of Wealth
Book:Poor Little Sick Girls: A Love Letter to Unacceptable Women
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“Those dear to me took fright for my safety and, perhaps, my sanity. Kings, they explained, do not walk like beggars for hundreds of miles. My response was that if a beggar could managed the feat, then why not a king? Did they think me less capable than a beggar? Sometimes I think that I am. The beggar knows much that the king can only guess. And yet who draws up the codes for begging ordinances? Often I wonder what my experience in life--my easy life following the Desolation, and my current level of comfort--has given me of any true experience to use in making laws. If we had to rely on what we knew, kings would only be of use in creating laws regarding the proper heating of tea and the cushioning of thrones.”

WisdomKingsExperienceEqualityFairnessLawsClassismCapabilitiesBeggars
Book:The Way of Kings
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“Qual è la ragione per cui da ogni angolo del mondo i più disgraziati i più poveri i reietti della storia le valanghe di straccioni le orde di pezzenti e di mendicanti invadono le città dovendo addirittura scimmiottare, per integrarsi, di essere educati, perbenisti, ipocriti come tutta intera la middle class europea? Come non provare una immensa, profonda, proprio interiore vergogna nel vedere gli occhi del ragazzo indiano con la sua giubbetta McDonald steso sul letto nel tentativo di recuperare qualche ora di sonno fra un turno e l’altro?”

Middle ClassClassismItalianoIpocrisiaPoveriVergognaClassismoSocieta
Book:Camere separate
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“We’re all Malkuthians. And you know what? We’re all Theropods too.” “Wh-wh-what’s that?” “You know… Theropods. We’ve all got sharp teeth, we all walk on two legs, we all have arms shorter than our legs. For the most part, we’ve got two eyes, two hands, and a tail. I mean, some of us have more fingers and some of us have a horn or two, but how different does that really make us? We’re all just people, that’s what I’m saying. There shouldn’t be all this division and categorization. It just leads to more hate. It leads to more dysfunction. People look at me and think I’m privileged. People look at you and think you’re untouchable. They look at the two of us together and they think it’s fire and ice. It’s not right.”

RacismEqualityRacism In AmericaClassismInterracial RomanceInterracial
Book:The Destroyer of Worlds: An Answer to Every Question
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“Where was I?' 'The bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses.' 'Oh, yes. Anyway, one sleepless night I stayed up with Father while he worked. It was all we could do to find a live patient to treat. In bed after bed we found dead people. 'And father started giggling,' Castle continued. 'He couldn't stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head, and do you know what that marvellous man said to me?' asked Castle. 'Nope.' '"Son," my father said to me, "someday this will all be yours.”

HumorDeathDarkFictionDiseaseScience FictionClassismCommentary On Society
Book:Cat's Cradle
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“Critics assert that Black Lives Matter is an anti-White terrorist group; the counterargument, "All Lives Matter," is little more than a racist dog whistle that attempts to both delegitimize centuries of claims of global anti-Black oppression and position those who exhibit tremendous pride in their Blackness as enemies of the state. Well, we are enemies of any racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic state that sanctions brutality and murder against marginalized people who deserve to live as free people.”

RacismSexismBlack Lives MatterXenophobiaBlmClassismAll Lives Matter
Book:Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets
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“Nationalism always preserved this initial intimate loyalty to the government and never quite lost its function of preserving a precarious balance between nation and state on one hand, between the nationals of an atomized society on the other. Native citizens of a nation-state frequently looked down upon naturalized citizens, those who had received their rights by law and not by birth, from the state and not from the nation....”

NationalismCitizenshipImperialismClassism1968Nation StateNativismNaturalization
Author:Hannah Arendt
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“For the new puritans, nothing need be explained or rationalized, because objective truth has become subordinated to -lived experience-. Where Marx saw society as an ongoing competition for resources and power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (a development from Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic), the high priests of Critical Social Justice see society as stratified according to identity politics.”

Social JusticeBigotryProgressiveMarxismWokeClassismCancel CultureSjwVictimhood Culture
Book:The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
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“There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their “traditions”, “heritage”, and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good. In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South’s leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic. Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson’s notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculously absurd. In the deep southern tradition, Hammond’s republic was modeled on those of ancient Greece and Rome. Featuring rights and democracy for the elite, slavery and submission for inferiors. It was sanctioned by the Christian god whose son never denounced the practice in his documented teachings. It was a perfect aristocratic republic, one that should be a model for the world. George Fitzhugh endorsed and expanded upon Hammond’s argument to enslave all poor people. Aristocrats, he explained, were really the nations Magna Carta because they owned so much and had the affection which all men feel for what belongs to them. Which naturally lead them to protect and provide for wives, children and slaves. Fitzhugh, whose books were enormously popular declared he was quite as intent on abolishing free society as you northerners are on abolishing slavery.”

American HistoryClassismSlave TradeSlavery In The United StatesDeep South
Book:American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
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