Best race & class Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Look, I want what's good for everybody. I want to promote good state education for all. I want to raise standards for all kids, irrespective of race and class but why can't they all just do what I say when I know I'm right?”

Knows Want Looks States Kids Race Class Standards Raises Education For All

Author:Arabella Weir

“People can't stand it when you deal with issues of race and class, and also sometimes the church, and you give a perspective that flushes out hypocrisy.”

People Giving Sometimes Church Deals Race Class Issues Perspective Hypocrisy

Author:Jose Padilha

“Though we are all human beings, we have built walls between ourselves and our neighbors through nationalism, through race, caste, and class - which again breeds isolation, loneliness.”

Humans Humanity Human Beings Race Class Loneliness Wall Built Neighbor Isolation Nationalism Castes

Book:The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, (1963-1964): The New Mind

Source: The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, (1963-1964): The New Mind

“My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.”

Men Important Father Poor Race Class Possession British Poor Man

Author:Sidney Poitier

“In the cosmology behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or to do anything... I'am an accident - a result - and therefore a victim... if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes.... or, if you look at it from the sociological perspective, I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result .”

Ifs Looks Reason Past Social Causes Results Race Behinds Class Psychology Perspective Economics Prejudice Victim Gender Accidents No Reason Upbringing Cosmology Sociological

Author:James Hillman

“I will be asking my network to lead a discussion on the issues of class, race, energy, the environment, disaster planning, Iraq -- all those things and more. This encompasses so many of the major issues of our time.”

Energy Race Class Issues Environment Majors Asking Iraq Disaster Planning Discussion Our Time

Author:Brian Williams

“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.”

“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.”

“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.”

Way Children Doe Seems Found Wealth Sleep Race Class Unique Access Significant Oppression Guts Territory Oppressed Machinery Tangled

Author:Andrea Dworkin

“There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply exactly the person who wants to read what I have written...”

Want Persons Ideas Age Race Class Written Identity Reader Pages Gender Naked Intimacy Agency Connecting Thrilling Nationality Written Word Tautology

Author:Will Self

“Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children. To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war.”

Believe Humans Mean Children Persons War Ends Nations Race Class Destiny Creation Youth Fit Unity Inevitable Human Race

Author:Dora Russell

“History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other.”

Mean Spiritual Values Church Race Class Struggle Blood Conflict Tasks Folks Dogma Settlement Spiritual Values

Author:Alfred Rosenberg

“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.”

Source: Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings

“There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation.”

Race Class Generations Becoming Fit Checks Steady Civilisation Fertility

Author:Francis Galton

“Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind, class-free place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal arrest record. Money is the great leveler.”

Giving Long America Lines Race Class Records Color Blind Gender Credit Criminals Damn Addresses Voters Cash Vegas Las Vegas Orientation Lineage Registration Voter Registration

Author:Marc Cooper

“Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class.”

Ideas Reality Found Sex Race Attitude Class Dangerous Civilization Truth Is Perception Attributes Ethnicity Postmodern Race Ethnicity

Book:The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994

Source: The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994

“Within the gendered institution of prostitution, race and class create a hierarchy with indigenous women at its lowest point.”

Race Class Institutions Lowest Hierarchy Indigenous Prostitution Lowest Point

Author:Melissa Farley

“In a manner akin to the influence of Tiger Woods on the other side of the Atlantic, Thierry Henry has helped kick down a few of the remaining bigoted stereotypes. Through his undisputable class and dignity, Henry has made a deep-seated difference to race relations in this country. Racism will flounder whenever white children grow up with a black man as their hero. That so few comment on Henry's colour is a silent tribute to his impact.”

“One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the alter of the great historical ideas - justice or progress or happiness of future generations... or emancipation of a nation or race or class... this is the belief that somewhere... there is a final solution.”

“A friend to me has no race, no class and belongs to no minority. My friendships were formed out of affection, mutual respect and a feeling of having something strong in common. These are eternal values that cannot be racially classified. This is the way I look at race.”

Way Looks Feelings Values Strong Common Race Class Eternal Affection Minorities Mutual My Friendship Mutual Respect

Author:Frank Sinatra

“The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”

Heart War Grief Race Class Generations Wall Citizens Holes Vietnam Memorial Monument Vietnam War Magnet

Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

“Those social behaviors which automatically preclude the building of a democratic world must go - every social limitation of human beings in terms of heredity, whether it be of race, or sex, or class. Every social institution which teaches human beings to cringe to those above and step on those below must be replaced by institutions which teach people to look each other straight in the face.”

Source: And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America

“Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.”

Humans America Nations Race Class Civilization Russia Instance Human Race Inferiors Degradation Enslavement

Author:Madame de Stael

“All prejudices, whether of race, sect or sex, class pride and caste distinctions are the belittling inheritance and badge of snobs and prigs.”

Sex Race Class Pride Prejudice Distinction Inheritance Sects Badges Castes Snob Belittle

Book:A Voice from the South

Source: A Voice from the South

“We all have to acknowledge the life and the path we were born into. And the things that define us, they're often somewhat narrow: our class, our race, our gender, where we grew up, what geography we were exposed to. The curiosity and wonderment of, "What it's like on your path?" - that's when you go into high alert.”

Born Race Class Path Grew Grew Up Curiosity Gender Acknowledge Exposed Geography

Author:Debra Granik

“If you put on a lousy production with white actors, it's lousy. There is a problem, or can be, at this stage of our social evolution, with mixing the casts. It may not be a question of race so much as class. You would rarely find a black man in a high executive position where he was swinging his weight around.”

Ifs Men May Problem Actors Social Black White Race Class Stage Position Evolution Weight Casts Productions Executives Mixing

Author:Howard Schultz

“Us as a people, we can't do it on our own. We have to understand that we're not each other's enemy. We have to stop discriminating against each other due to class and due to race and due to location or financial position.”

People Race Enemy Class Position Financial Dues Location

Author:Kanye West

“The privilege of privilege is that the terms of privilege are rendered invisible. It is a luxury not to have to think about race, or class, or gender. Only those marginalized by some category understand how powerful that category is when deployed against them.”

Thinking Term Powerful Race Class Privilege Gender Invisible Luxury Categories Marginalized

Author:Michael Kimmel

“Controlling women as the means of reproduction is made even more necessary by any race or caste or class system. It just comes together, it's just like life. And therefore it's not even practical to be a feminist without being anti-racist or against classism. It just doesn't work.”

Mean Made Together Race Class Feminist Practicals Racist Reproduction Castes Classism Class System Anti Racist Controlling Women

Author:Gloria Steinem

“...I believed passionately that Communists were a race of horned men who divided their time equally between the burning of Nancy Drew books and the devising of a plan of nuclear attack that would land the largest and most lethal bomb squarely upon the third-grade class of Thomas Jefferson School in Morristown, New Jersey.”

Source: The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“There is something in us, somehow, that, in the most degraded condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fanciedsuperiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than ourselves.”

Chance Race Class Conditions Scales Bigotry Deceiving

Book:White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war

Source: White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war

“It is fitting that the Government of the United States should assume the obligation of the establishment and maintenance of a first-class university for the education of colored menand I wish to put in this caveatthat the colored race today, all of them, would be better off if they all had university education.... Of course, the basis of education of the colored people is in the primary schools and in industrial schools.... In those schools must be introduced teachers from such university institutions as this.”

“Secularists argue that differences of religion were the chief cause of violence in our history - conveniently overlooking violent clashes of region, race, and class, not the least of which was the bloodiest war in history until that time, the Civil War.”

War Christian Causes Differences Religious Race Class Violence Arguing Violent Chiefs Civil War Regions Clash Overlooking

Book:Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring

Source: Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring

“Yearning is the word that best describes a common psychological state shared by many of us, cutting across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual practice.”

States Common Race Class Practice Psychology Cutting Gender Boundaries Psychological Yearning

Book:Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

Source: Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

“A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women.”

Has Beens Individual Force Common Race Class Share Modern Diversity Determine Feminist Factors Oppression Etc Sexism Oppressed Preference Assertion

Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.”

Giving Born Acting Race Class Comedy Car Lessons Singing Driving Flying Piano Race Car Piano Lesson Skydiving Car Driving

Author:Steve Harvey

“The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of a moral obligation.”

Law Political Race Liberty Moral Class Ideals Obligation Realization Reign Abolish Discharge Moral Obligation

Author:Lord Acton

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.”

Source: The Road Less Traveled, 25th Anniversary Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

“The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.”

Stills Happens Age Time Money Race Class Aging Democratic Distinction Birthday Abandoned Hymns Democratic Society Class Distinction

Author:W. H. Auden

“I think the president can set a tone and say we're not divided by gender, age, race. We're all Americans and want the same things. We want the best things for our kids. We want the rules to be fair. If they work hard, get a great education, they should be able to join the middle class.”

Ifs Thinking Want Should Hard Kids Age Able President Race Class Middle Hard Work Fairs Gender Best Things Tone Middle Class Divided Great Education

Author:Bobby Jindal

“I remember classes in college where the professor was espousing certain theories about how blacks were inherently less intelligent. But I learned a long time ago to give people the benefit of the doubt, not to assume that somebody was reacting to you because of race.”

People Giving Long Remember Certain Race Class Doubt College Theory Benefits Long Time Intelligent Assuming Professors Long Time Ago Reacting Benefit Of The Doubt

Author:Condoleezza Rice

“I would put all the efforts to humanize the "masculine" and "feminine" gender roles that are the beginning of a false human hierarchy and normalize race, class and other systems of domination to come.”

Humans Effort Race Class Roles Gender Feminine Domination Masculine Hierarchy Gender Roles Masculine And Feminine

Author:Gloria Steinem

“Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the conditions and problems that most concern me - anti-colonial theories, Foucault, critical disability studies, prison studies and the like are rarely seen in standard US Law School curricula, where students are still fighting on many campuses to get a single class on race or poverty offered - I developed most of my thinking about these topics through activist reading groups and collaborative writing projects with other activist scholars.”

“One of my favorite things about soccer is how the art and the passion of the game somehow unites people and nations and classes and races. That's something that comes out of the game and how it's displayed and why people enjoy watching it and supporting it.”

People Art Passion Games Nations Enjoy Race Class My Favorite Soccer Favorites Things

Author:Tobin Heath

“The current transgender movement is composed of a great number of factions, divided by those old favorites of class, race, age, language, region, and nationality.”

Age Language Numbers Race Class Movement Currents Regions Divided Transgender Nationality Factions

Author:Kate Bornstein

“When I go to a great movie, I can live somebody else's life a little bit for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.”

Feels Littles I Can Different Belief Bits Walks Race Class Economic Members Little Bit Shoes Gender Different Times Different Races Different Beliefs Economic Class

Author:Roger Ebert

“America is a construction of mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory.”

Mind America Race Class Territory Construction

Author:Robert Hughes

“I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.”

Social Results Race Class Economic Economics Prejudice Victim Gender Upbringing

Author:James Hillman

“I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.”

Thinking Moving Race Class Generations Reader Classic

Author:Rita Dove

“The capitalist class is interested in keeping the workingmen divided among themselves. Hence it foments race and religious animosities that come down from the past.”

Past Religious Race Class Divided Capitalist Animosity

Book:Two pages from Roman history: I. Plebs leaders and labor leaders. II. The warning of the Gracchi

Source: Two pages from Roman history: I. Plebs leaders and labor leaders. II. The warning of the Gracchi

Race Quotes

Related topics

Race Quotes