“We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor - got her master's with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.” HardUsedFatherPoorClassFiguresMastersMomHonorUniversityMy MomAcceptedNew OrleansContractor Author:Frank Ocean
“I have a lot of rage about things that didn't happen to me, tied up with watching an immigrant, working-class father struggle to make his way through the world - and seeing how society was modeled to keep him in his place.” WorldWayHappensFatherClassStruggleSeeingRageImmigrantsTiedWorking ClassTied Up Author:Dennis Lehane
“If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count.” IfsMotherFatherClassMiddleMy FamilyMiddle ClassMother And Father Author:Dave Van Ronk
“I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family, there's lots of children, seven brothers, two sisters grew up together, fighting with each other, went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family.” ChildrenTwoSchoolTogetherMotherFightingFatherLevelsClassMiddleBrotherGrewGrew UpMy FamilySevenGradesMiddle ClassMiddle Class FamilyTwo Sisters Author:Muhammad Yunus
“I come from a wonderful family. My mother was a pianist and my father was a salesman. They were very middle-class, very middle-Western.” MotherFatherClassWonderfulMiddleWesternMiddle ClassSalesmanPianistWonderful Family Author:Charles Kimbrough
“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.” PeopleMenWorldBelieveCertainFatherClassTalentIndustryBirthAngelRoseVanityFollySentimentsBoastApesAncestryShabby Book:The Martyrdom of Man Source: The Martyrdom of Man
“George Bush is by American standards rabidly Upper Class - Eastern, Socially Attractive, WASP, 19th-century money, several generations of Andover and Yale (and, while we're at it, his father, George H. W. 'Poppy' Bush, was a former president and his grandfather was the Nazis' U.S. banker in the 1930s).” FatherPresidentClassGenerationsCenturyStandardsFormerAttractiveGrandfatherNaziEasternBankers19th Century1930sYaleUpper ClassPoppiesWasps Author:Peter York
“My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.” MenImportantFatherPoorRaceClassPossessionBritishPoor Man Author:Sidney Poitier
“It doesn't matter if it's in my class or around the world, anywhere, the first thing I say is "First of all guys, I want to give my Heavenly Father credit for all I do and the Lord Jesus Christ to give me the opportunity to go out and reach and save lives." To me, that's the most important thing.” IfsWorldWantGivingFirstsImportantMatterGuyFatherOpportunityJesusChristLordClassJesus ChristGive MeImportant ThingsCreditAround The WorldHeavenlyHeavenly FatherLord Jesus ChristSave A Life Author:Billy Blanks
“My mother was a teacher, my father was a community organizer. I come from a working class background.” MotherFatherCommunityClassTeacherBackgroundsWorking ClassOrganizer Author:Chris Hayes
“Cockburn's personal history links him to the politics of the Communist Party, and there are still moments in his writing - debating the number of people estimated to have perished in Stalin's gulags, claiming that 'the Brezhnev years were a Golden Age for the Soviet working class', when aspects of his father's convictions can be glimpsed.” PeopleWritingYearsStillsMomentsAgeFatherPartyNumbersClassAspectConvictionGoldenLinksCommunistSovietWorking ClassGolden AgeCommunist PartyPersonal HistoryGulagsBrezhnev Author:Alexander Cockburn
“I always knew I wanted to be a performer, and my mother started taking me to dance classes when I was five. My mother is a teacher, my father works at an insurance company. When I said I wanted to be a performer, people went, "Yeah, right." You don't do that where I come from.” PeopleSaidWantedMotherFatherCompanyClassFiveTeacherYeahPerformersInsurance CompaniesDance Class Author:Jennifer Lopez
“I was never a doodler. I had never felt a drive to draw... Actually when I was a kid, I really hated art classes. My father was a kind of a Sunday painter and he liked to draw and do water colors. So, I would bring him my assignment and he would do them for me, because it was easy for him to do.” KindArtKidsFatherFeltEasyWaterClassColorDrawsDrawingPainterHatedSundayAssignmentsArt Class Author:Wade Guyton
“I grew up in the Fifties, and the majority of people in my class had fathers living at home. I was very aware that I was in the minority. I had a foreign name, and my daddy didn't come and pick me up from school. I felt like an outsider, which probably helped me as an actress.” PeopleHomeSchoolFatherNamesFeltClassGrewGrew UpPicksMajorityActressesMinoritiesOutsidersDaddyPick MePick Me Up Author:Cherie Lunghi
“Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.” IfsMenGivingMayMeanGovernmentFatherOpinionClassDemocracyObjectsBirthWalkingTraditionVoteDemocratRefuseAccidentsDefinedGood ManNeglectAncestorArrogantSubmitObscureExtensionsOur FatherRough TimesOligarchy Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
“I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.” WritingYearsTwoHomeNightFatherLeftClassCreativeStudyWrittenReadyCommandTwo YearsAirportsCreative WritingFlewBack HomeSelectedWorkshopsIowaCastesCalcuttaPasturesBridegroomWriting Workshop Author:Bharati Mukherjee
“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
“My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.” SchoolMotherFatherParentRoomsClassTeacherTaughtBrotherBelovedGrandmotherLatinMy GrandmotherSociologyLibrarianGeographyCountySchool TeachersKnobsPrecursorGeography Teachers Author:Sam Abell
“I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. What people don't realize is that my father was a multimillionaire who owned 12 hotels, motels, a steel mill, a radio station, a club, nursing home, and a law office. So I think it's safe to say I'm a little above middle class and I'm a daddy's girl.” PeopleThinkingLittlesHomeLawGirlFatherRealizingClassMiddleGrewSafeOfficeGrew UpRadioClubsMiddle ClassHotelStationsChicagoSteelDaddyNursingMillsRadio StationsNursing HomeMotels Author:LisaRaye McCoy-Misick
“I was brought up in a very naval, military, and conservative background. My father and his friends had very typical opinions of the British middle class - lower-middle class actually - after the war. My father broke into the middle class by joining the navy. I was the first member of my family ever to go to private school or even to university. So, the armed forces had been upward mobility for him.” FirstsWarSchoolFatherForceOpinionClassMiddleMilitaryMembersMy FamilyUniversityConservativeBritishBackgroundsBrokeMiddle ClassTypicalNavyJoiningArmed ForcesMobilityNavalPrivate SchoolUpward Mobility Author:Christopher Hitchens
“Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: ""My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind.” ShouldLongUseFatherPoorClassSuccessfulRichMiddleSubjectsMankindHigherLettersOrganizationDisasterMiddle ClassExecutivesStationsPassagesExposedCalamitySalesmanVicissitudesRobinson Crusoe Author:B. C. Forbes