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Social Class Quotes

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Social Class Quotes

“Most people do not mind having a house that is smaller and/or a car that is cheaper than their neighbours’, as long as they each earn and have more money than their neighbours, and, equally important, their neighbours know that.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“I was taught to prioritize what's "important"; food, water, children (Being the eldest among our siblings, I was taught to watch out for the younger ones). I was taught that the important stuff wasn't shiny; it involved logistics, practicals, survival. Only the necessary stuff to get by. Style, beauty, self-expression, affairs, superficiality — these are luxuries in my world. I could barely afford to eat lunch, much less buy clothes or get my hair styled in a salon. My family couldn't afford cable TV so I never watched MTV to learn the latest trends. So when I started high school, I had no regard for appearances. This is how I learned, the hard way, that maturity has no place with teenagers who could afford to have fun.”

LoveLife LessonsSexRelationshipsYouthDatingSuperficialitySocial ClassFilipino Authors
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“I wondered why I pined for women like Kayla. Rich girls have always been out of my league as a kid, so I'm probably compensating in adulthood... Over time, I realized it wasn't just their looks or economic status I wanted. It was the contrast. They are the people who sit comfortably in their cozy worlds and believe they are enough; that all they must do is love themselves for who they are and they shall find friendship, intimacy, love, success, and all the good things people like me must painstakingly earn and seduce for.”

LoveSexRelationshipsDatingSeductionSocial ClassFilipino AuthorsRich Girls
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“Downward social mobility. We hear a lot about the great social mobility in America with the focus usually on the comparative ease of moving upwards. What's less discussed is how easy it is to go down. I think that's the direction that we're all heading in. And I think that the downward fall is gonna be very fast. Not just for us as individuals, but the whole preppy class. Just look around. Take those of our fathers who grew up very well off. Maybe their careers started out well enough but just as their contemporaries really began to accomplish things, they started to quit, or rising above office politics, or refusing to compete and risk open failure. Or not doing the humdrum part of the job. Or only doing the humdrum part. Or gradually spending more and more time on something more interesting — conservation, or the arts — where even if they were total failures no one would know it.”

ClassAmbitionDeclineSocial ClassSocial MobilitySocial ClassesCareerismDownward MobilityDownwardly Mobile
Book:Metropolitan: A Novella and Three Stories
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“Parce que c'est ma mère, elle qui a sacrifié chacun de ses jours et plusieurs de ses nuits pour me voir libérée des servilités et soumissions qui étaient les siennes, qui a souahaité le plus ma réussite. Parce qu'elle a prié la vierge Marie à genoux dans toutes les chapelles pour que j'échappe aux fatalités du destin social. Parce que même si je me contruisais contre elle en embrassant les codes qui l'excluent, j'ai produit sa fierté. Parce que la trahison que l'ascension suppose était non seulement attendue mais espérée.”

CultureRaceIdentityImmigrationSelf DiscoveryCanadaSocial ClassLatinoamérica
Book:Là où je me terre
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“We are the bourgeoisie—the third estate, as they call us now—and what we want is a nobility of merit, nothing more. We don't recognize this lazy nobility we now have, we reject our present class hierarchy. We want all men to be free and equal, for no one to be someone else's subject, but for all to be subject to the law. There should be an end of privileges and arbitrary power. Everyone should be treated equally as a child of the state, and just as there are no longer any middlemen between the layman and his God, so each citizen should stand in direct relation to the state. We want freedom of the press, of employment, of commerce. We want all men to compete without any special privileges, and the only crown should be the crown of merit.”

FreedomDemocracyCompetitionEqualityGermanyMiddle ClassHierarchyMonarchyAristocracyStateBourgeoisieSocial ClassProtestantism
Book:Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
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“Always remain calm and unruffled, no matter what happens. If your coachman has a heart attack, your carriage crashes, your hat blows off and your drawers fall down, just say: 'Goodness me, such excitement,' and get in a hansom. Remember that the country is better than the town, idleness is superior to work, old is preferable to new and rank is more important than money. Know a little about everything, but never be an expert.”

RichnessBourgeoisieSocial ClassEliteProtege
Book:A Dangerous Fortune
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“The social function of court life is to enlist the support and adherence of the public for the ruling house. The Renaissance princes want to delude not only the people, they also want to make an impression o the nobility and bind it to the court. But they are not dependent on either its services or its company; they can use anyone, of whatever descent, provided he is useful. Consequently, the Italian courts of Renaissance differ from the medieval courts in their very constitution; they accept into their circle upstart adventurers and merchants who have made money, plebeian humanists and ill-bred artists - entirely as if they had all the traditional social qualifications. In contrast to the exclusive moral community of court chivalry, a comparatively free, fundamentally intellectual type of salon life develops at these courts which is, on the one hand the continuation of the aesthetic social culture of middle-class circles, such as described in the Decamerone and in the Paradiso degli Alberti, and represents, on the other, the preparatory stage in the development of those literary salons which play such an important part in the intellectual life of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

IntellectualCourtMiddle ClassAristocracySocial ClassSalon
Book:The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque
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“Americans, whether armed or not, were still looking everywhere but at social class when parsing the texture of their lives. It wasn’t so much that stressed-out blue-collar folks were clinging bitterly to their guns and religion, as Barack Obama had posited while running for president. It was more that guns and religion were keeping them from feeling bitter about the indignities inflicted on the middle class.”

ReligionMiddle ClassGunsSocial Class
Book:Gun Guys: A Road Trip
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“Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.”

ReligionPoliticsAtheismLibertarianismSecularismSocial ClassInternationalismAlbert Einstein
Book:Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
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“To recall the extent to which Hitchcock was marked by his petit bourgeois interpellation may not radically change the way we read his films. It should, however, remind us that his British films in particular come out of a highly class-structured and class-conscious social formation and are likely to bear the traces of this, even if only in their interstices.”

CinemaSocial ClassFilmsAlfred HitchcockPetit Bourgeois
Book:Cinema, Culture, Scotland: Selected Essays
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“Si se adoptara una ortografía fonética y sencilla, que, aprendida por todos pronto y bien, hiciera imposibles las faltas de ortografía, ¿no desaparecería uno de los modos de que nos distingamos las personas de buena educación de aquéllas que no han podido recibirla tan esmerada? Si la instrucción no nos sirve a los pocos para que nos diferenciemos de los pobres, ¿para qué nos sirve?”

EducationEducaciónSocial ClassOrthographySociolinguisticsOrtografíaClase Social
Author:Miguel de Unamuno
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“The last time everyone loved or at least liked everyone was when the world had a population of about 4.”

WorldLoveHumansHumorFunnyReligionHateHumanityQuotesCultureRelationshipsHuman BeingsClassRelationshipMankindHumourHumorousHatredQuoteProfoundPopulationPhilosopherQuote Of The DayTensionThoughtfulSatireThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulDislikeAphorismSouth AfricaQuotationsAfricaMaximsSayingsHierarchyNationalityAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkLikeAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsLovedCastesStatusAfricanQuotationSocial ClassGnomeSatiristEveryoneMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkCasteAxiomDictumDictumsSocial StatusSouth AfricanWorld PopulationSatiristsEverybodyClassesSocial ClassesLikedDenomination
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“I believe writers need to be chameleons, or like Meryl Streep, who can play all sorts of characters. A good writer should be able to cross gender lines and people of all social classes. So for me, writing from a male point of view would be a great challenge, that I would look forward to taking on.”

PeopleNeedsShouldWritingBelieveLooksPlayCharacterWould BeAbleI BelieveSocialChallengesLinesViewsClassCrossesMalesGenderPoint Of ViewGood WritersSocial ClassChameleon
Author:Marisha Pessl
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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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“The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.”

IfsMenWorldFirstsWarRealPoliticalNationsSocialGoalPartyCommonExistenceStepsClassEconomicRepublicanBasesDenyCorporateAcknowledgeElitesFirst StepsNurtureRepublican PartyPolitical SystemsCommon ManGopSocial ClassBacklashCorporate WorldClass System
Author:Thomas Frank
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“It hurts me to hear the tone in which the poor are condemned as "shiftless," or "having a pauper spirit," just as it would if a crowd mocked at a child for its weakness, or laughed at a lame man because he could not run, or a blind man because he stumbled.”

IfsMenChildrenRunningSpiritHurtPoorWeaknessBlindCrowdsToneLaughedIt HurtsHurt MeLameSocial ClassBlind Man
Book:Beauty for Ashes, by Albion Fellows Bacon; with Numerous Illustrations
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