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Working Class Quotes

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Working Class Quotes

“But the reality is that chav-hate is a lot more than snobbery. It is a class war. It is an expression of the belief that everyone should become middle class and embrace middle-class values and lifestyles, leaving those who don't to be ridiculed and hated. It is about refusing to acknowledge anything of worth in working-class Britain, and systematically ripping it to shreds in newspapers, on TV, on Facebook, and in general conversation. This is what the demonization of the working class means.”

ClassSocietyWorking ClassOwen Jones
Author:Owen Jones
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“This is the fate which awaits many of the middle class and the wage-class. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to serve notice on these thieves, and highway robbers, sitting in high places of “honor” and “trust,” that by the eternal god of justice, and by the manhood in you, that you will not, in this land of plenty, allow your children to become the mere hirelings and dependents upon the sweet will of their children?”

ChildrenJusticeMiddle ClassWorking Class
Author:Lucy Parsons
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“Laila could picture the flow of traffic all around her. From above, she watched the cars move along in streams like all those ants on her kitchen floor. What had they been looking for anyway? A crumb here, a speck of sugar there? The vast stockpiles of food in the pantry and fridge remained untouched. For that matter, what kept all these cars returning to the city day after day? A little money, a little entertainment? Surface operations like Livetrac kept the ants fighting over crumbs while the obscene fortunes of a shadowy elite were counted not in dollars but in lives.”

CitiesSocietyCapitalismMiddle ClassControlWorking ClassInsectsBugsCityModern Life
Book:Dreck
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“The society I grew up in, ruled by the middle class, was and remains entirely middle-class. When I look in magazines or books, watch films or TV shows, when I talk to my colleagues and other writers and my students, there always seems to be the same handful of middle-class writers referenced. These books are referenced by the middle-class writer they read about in literary journals. And these middle-class writers write from a middle-class point of view, which is to say from a distance and, for the most part, this means not about the concrete, real world in which the majority of people live. This massive deployment of values and beliefs, aesthetics and desires, is a form of indoctrination, one we remain for the most part, unaware of. Rather than confronting the working class with their values and aesthetics, insisting we adhere to them, the middle class simply present their beliefs and aesthetics as natural, as the world.”

CultureSocietyTasteMiddle ClassWorking ClassAesthetics
Book:The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class
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“How do you recognise a Glaswegian in English literature? He's the cut-out figure who wields a razor-blade, gets moroculous drunk and never has a single, solitary 'thought' in his entire life. He beats his wife and beats his kids and beats his next door neighbour. And another striking thing; everybody from a Glaswegian or working-class background, everybody in fact from any regional part of Britain -none of them knew how to talk! Unlike the nice, stalwart upper-class English hero whose words on the page were always absolutely splendidly proper and pure and pristinely accurate whether in dialogue or without. Most interesting of all, for myself as a writer, the narrative belonged to them and them alone. They owned it. The place where thought and spiritual life exists.”

ThoughtNarrativeBritainSpiritual LifeWorking ClassUpper ClassEnglish LiteratureGlaswegians
Book:Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political
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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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“…perhaps, he reflected now, he’d been trying to atone somehow for what had happened at the hui, to prove to himself that he was not just yet another Marxist intellectual cliché, not just yet another armchair critic with soft hands and smug opinions, who theorised about the working class while never having done a day of drudge work in his life. Tony was very proud to be well read, and had often railed against the defensive anti-intellectualism that defined his country’s culture, but he had nevertheless recognised in himself, at times, a deep desire to perform a kind of excessive rugged practicality in compensation for his bookishness, submitting himself to physical privations, testing his strength and his endurance well beyond what was called for, and devising circuitous home-made solutions to problems that could be solved much more easily, and often more cheaply, by paying someone else to fix them. It hadn’t been until he’d gone abroad that he’d been able to identify this trait as itself peculiarly Kiwi, reflecting a broader attitude held among his countrymen that to do a thing with effort was always more respectable than to have it done with ease; inconvenience, in New Zealand, tended to be treated as a test of character, such that it was a point of national pride to be able to withstand discomfort or poor service without giving in to the temptation to complain.”

EffortCriticismWorking ClassMarxismIntellectualismIntellectualsRuggednessBookishnessKiwisNew Zealanders
Book:Birnam Wood
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“The occupants of the other three looked like the people they had seen rioting in the streets of Paris that morning. They were citizens of the other France, the France one didn’t read about in guidebooks. They were the put-upon and the left-behind, the ones without glittering degrees from elite institutions of learning. Globalization and automation had eroded their value in the workforce. The service economy was their only option. Their counterparts in Britain and America had already had their say at the ballot box. France, reckoned Gabriel, would be next.”

Working ClassBlue CollarAutomationLaboring ClassThe Poor Get Poorer
Book:The New Girl
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“If tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution and we have paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognize themselves in our party. And too many among us have turned to the right for answers to why they've been left behind. We will leave mediocrity in our past. No longer will we have to open a history book for proof that Democrats can dare to be great.”

PoliticsWorking ClassCautionDemocratic PartyDemocratsConvention
Author:Zohran Mamdani
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“the words on the paper im readin are blarin out at me loud an angrylike tellin me there's no end to the recession theres no jobs theres no peace theres no hope man an people wonder why i do what i do? an bums are bummin lights from me and babies are squintin up at me an my coffee is rupturing my gut bitterlike an i guess the world is kinda like the coffee sometimes – ill be suffering thru both tomorrow.”

PoetryPoorWorking ClassBeatRecessionBeat PoetryBums
Author:Scott C. Holstad
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“Being an elite is not a mere possession or something "within" an actor (skills, talents, and human capital); it is an embodied performative act enabled by by both possessions and the inscriptions that accompany experiences within elite institutions (schools, clubs, families, networks, etc.). Our bodily tastes, dispositions, and tendencies are not simply something we're born with; they are things that are produced through our experiences in the world. Not only do they occur in our minds, but they are things we enact repeatedly so that soon these performances look less and less like an artificial role we're playing- a role that might advantage us- and instead look more and more like just who we naturally are.”

ElitesWorking ClassEmbodimentHabitus
Book:Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School
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“A commitment to expanding democracy is at the core of all good socialist thinking. Democracy is the principle that people ought to have a say over decisions that affect them, and that they should be in control of their own lives rather than being subjected to the wishes of powerful economic and political elites.”

DemocracyLaborSocial JusticeHuman RightsSocialismWorking ClassEconomic JusticeDemocratic Socialism
Book:Why You Should Be a Socialist
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“What the poor as well as the rich require is not to be indoctrinated, is not to be taught other people’s opinions, but to be induced and enabled to think for themselves. It is not physical science that will do this, even if they could learn it much more thoroughly than they are able to do. After reading, writing, and arithmetic (the last a most important discipline in habits of accuracy and precision, in which they are extremely deficient), the desirable thing for them seems to be the most miscellaneous information, and the most varied exercise of their faculties. They cannot read too much. Quantity is of more importance than quality, especially all reading which relates to human life and the ways of mankind; geography, voyages and travels, manners and customs, and romances, which must tend to awaken their imagination and give them some of the meaning of self-devotion and heroism, in short, to unbrutalise them.”

EducationMiddle ClassWorking ClassUpper Class
Book:The Letters of John Stuart Mill, Vol 1
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“School, and it's shite attitudes towards whatever or whoever I was, was the source of my frustration. They shunted my classes a little as I found myself falling headfirst into the comprehensive school abyss, Joining the educational subnormal in staring at walls for hours on end whilst being babysat whatever lesson I had been removed from. Black and Asian capitalise that undo that people went from being my neighbours and classmates to parasitical leeches I could barely bring myself to acknowledge joining the educational subnormal in staring at walls for hours on end whilst being babysat through whatever lesson I had been removed from. Black and Asian people went from being my neighbours and classmates to parasitical leeches I could barely bring myself to acknowledge. they were not worth my time. I was beginning to understand what the stickers and I newspapers had meant. I was beginning to understand that deep sense of frustration that these people were sealing my history and by birthright. Why couldn't they just fuck off where they truly belong? And their 'protectors', the teachers and civil servants with their bleeding Hearts and cheap, shit, French cars were little more than university-educated scum from the middle classes sent to suppress my freedom.”

RacismRejectionWorking ClassXenophobiaFar RightClass WarProjecting BlameSchool Exclusion
Book:HATE: My Life In The British Far Right
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“Disparity, Education and Economy Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary. The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged. You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization. Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition. Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration. Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.”

EconomyAmbitionWorking ClassEducational PhilosophyEconomic GrowthLivelihoodEconomic DisparitySocial WelfareEconomics GreedFair Wage
Book:Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting
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“Бедные люди капризны, — это уж так от природы устроено. Я это и прежде чувствовал. Он, бедный-то человек, он взыскателен; он и на свет-то божий иначе смотрит, и на каждого прохожего косо глядит, да вокруг себя смущенным взором поводит, да прислушивается к каждому слову, — дескать, не про него ли там что говорят? ...И ведомо каждому, Варенька, что бедный человек хуже ветошки и никакого ни от кого уважения получить не може, что уж там ни пиши!”

PeopleSocialSocietyWorking ClassFolk
Book:Poor Folk
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“We wanted a body race war, we felt it was inevitable and we would have to be the ones controllling the streets when it happened. We weren't the kind of blokes who could cry on each other's shoulders over loves gone-astray or bitter person dissatisfactions. All of these friendships were built solely on our hatred and distrust of others. The class system, or what little I knew of it, was quite obviously separate to race. There were two ways of looking at it: downtrodden and ignored because we were either white or because we were also working class.”

RacismWorking ClassFar RightDomestic TerrorismFacismRace War
Book:HATE: My Life In The British Far Right
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“The boomers’ most consequential political legacy may be the biggest irony of all: for all their claims to be the most progressive generation ever, the main result of the boomers’ involvement in politics has been the destruction of the Left. In 1950, the Democratic party polled fifteen points better among those without college degrees, compared with those with them. By 2016, that advantage had flipped to a fifteen-point deficit. The Labour Party in the U.K. has undergone the same transformation, from the party of the working class to the party of the college-educated elite. But if a left-wing party is no longer the party of the working class, what good is it? What left is it?”

LeftLabourWorking ClassDemocratic Party
Book:Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster
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“¡Obreros! Picad el miedo. Vuestra es la tierra desnuda. Saltad el hambre y la muerte por sobre la honda laguna, y uníos a los campesinos, y a los que en caña se anudan. ¡Rómpanse un millón de puños contra moral tan injusta! ¡Alzad, alzad vuestros brazos como se alzaron en Rusia! Workers! Slash the fear. Yours is the naked earth. Leap hunger and death over the deep lagoon, and join the peasants and those knotted to the cane. Break a million fists against so unjust a morality! Raise, raise your arms like they were raised in Russia! ("Desde el Puente Martín Peña")”

WorkersInjusticeRussiaWorking ClassRussian RevolutionPuerto Rican Poetry
Author:Julia de Burgos
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“There was a movement at one time, not so many years ago either, which was international in its scope, which had for its object the setting aside the first of May for a general, international holiday, looking ultimately to the inauguration of a short-hour workday, but this grand idea has been side-tracked in later years by a lot of political buncombe and claptrap, thus persuading the working classes into the notion that they can gain their freedom by electing a lot of fellows to office. (1906)”

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Author:Lucy Parsons
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“Theoretically it is, indeed, asserted that the relation between employer and employee is based upon a contract for the accomplishment of a definite purpose. The purpose in this case is social production. But a contract has meaning only when both parties participate equally in the purpose. In reality, however, the worker has today no voice in determining production, for this is given over completely to the employer. The consequence is that the worker is debased by doing a thousand things which constantly serve only to injure the whole community for the advantage of the employer.”

PoliticsEconomicsUnionsSocialismWorking ClassAnarchismProletariatSyndicalism
Book:Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice
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“Every union, every association of persons pursuing identical aims and aspirations, likewise furnishes numerous examples of such higher aims, which pursue not material but only moral rewards. The emulators are moved by the ambition to distinguish themselves, by the desire to serve the common cause. This type of ambition is a virtue, its pursuit promotes the general benefit, while also bringing the individual satisfaction. Ambition is harmful only if it is pursued to the detriment of the community or at the expense of others.”

AmbitionCapitalismUnionsSocialismWorking ClassProletariat
Book:On the Political Position of Social-Democracy
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“We are endowed with different kinds of gifts for different kinds of services.”

ChristianLeadershipSocietyJesus ChristChristian LifeFaith QuotesServantWorking TogetherLeadersChristian LivingWorking ClassWork EthicGiftsTeam BuildingHumanity QuotesLeadership CharacteristicsBelieversTeam WorkBlessed LifeBlessings QuotesTeam SpiritLeadership StylesServant LeaderHumanity AdviceWorking HardBlessing Of The LordTalents And GiftsWorking With PeopleServicesTeam ManagementEndurance And AttitudeTalented PeopleTalent And CourageGifts From HeavenGifted PeopleService Of ManGifted HandsService Help BlessingsTalented WomenEndowedCommunity Services
Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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