Quotes About Class

My parents came from working-class, small-peasant, farm-labourer backgrounds and had made the grade during the fascist years; my father came out of the army as a captain.

My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.

With upper- and middle-class lawns, there's more hidden, whereas with working-class or poor lawns, there's more out to see. It just sits right out there. Very honest. Like the people.

These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.

I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.

With a few notable exceptions, literary fiction in the U.K. is dominated by an upper and upper middle-class clique who usually have a tin ear for the demotic and who portray working-class characters with, at best, a benevolent condescension.

Am I allowed to call myself working-class now? Because obviously I'm now very rich.

In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor.

My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.

I don't know anyone, from any class, who's had a perfectly easy life. I've met people born into wealthy families who feel like they didn't have much emotional support, and people who come from working-class families who had loads of love but no money.

There was a time in my life when I was going in and out of houses that were extraordinarily different - from a working-class terrace in Northampton to the homes of friends who were really very wealthy. It was quite an odd position to be in, I realise looking back, and quite a nice one.

I grew up with Jilly and Tamsin driving Volvos. But I wasn't one of them... I always felt more comfortable with Cockney and working-class people. My heroes were the Beatles and people like Michael Caine.

In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.

I've never been aware of the difference between so-called posh actors and working-class actors.

In 'Love Story,' Oliver Barrett IV comes from generations of wealth and privilege, but when he meets working-class Jennifer Cavilleri, he can't resist. When they marry, his father disowns him, but they struggle on in love, until she's diagnosed with cancer and they can't afford the costly treatments.

It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement.

I keep my house tidy, because then I can think clearly. I feel the same about myself. Presenting yourself well is a working-class thing - my dad was a printer, but he wore a tie most days. The ungroomed look belongs more to the middle classes.

I suppose I don't have to work, but I do love working. I class myself as a working-class girl, and I've never stopped working. When I'm offered shows here, there and the other, I do an awful lot because I feel other people would love to be offered what I'm offered; who am I to say no? I'm definitely working class, and I always will be.

My dad didn't have a formal education, but he had a wonderful vocabulary. So in 'Harvest,' I wanted my main character to be an innately intelligent man who would have the vocabulary to say whatever he wanted in the same way as lots of working-class people can.

Most people were annoyed with my voice, I think, because I'm working-class, and that doesn't sound quite right on Radio 4.

The establishment wants to connect with people who are like them, and I wasn't. I'm a black gay man from a poor working-class family. Most of the people who look like me are in prison.

I wish that positions of power dependent on education were as open to abused children, poor children, working-class children as they are to the children of the rich and successful. I really wish that were true.

I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class.

Precariousness is not just a working-class thing.