Quotes About Class

In his book Oligarchy, American political scientist Jeffrey Winters provides a stunning illustration of just how dire US inequality has become: the average wealth of the richest one hundred American households relative to that of the bottom 90 percent approximates the wealth disparity between a Roman senator and a slave at the height of the Roman Empire.

It was about a class system, the fact that the underclass, Oskar and Albin, always slipped off the roofs of the rich folk.

Morality is only for the middle class, sweet. The lower class can't afford it, and the upper classes have entirely too much leisure time to fill

Good afternoon, residents! A reminder that our salsa dance class starts in ten minutes." "Shall we go to that, Gram-Gram?" I said. "A lot of times, meeting someone in person is best." "Only women go to salsa dancing." "Maybe you should become a lesbian, then. It would solve that pesky life expectancy problem.

I am honored that my freshman class colleagues have put their trust in me to represent our historic class at the leadership table. The incoming freshman class of Representatives is large and diverse but we share many common goals including cutting wasteful spending, getting our economy back on track and making government smarter and more efficient.

You will always choose the Peaches and Benjis of the world over me because you're loyal to the gentry.

It's sort of like an invitation to the White House—only you meet a better class of people in the mental hospital.

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal life style of as many members of society as possible. By compromising and playing at class war, we lose.

But even in Curzon Street society, if you say, for instance, that you are a tough guy they will consider you a vulgar, irritating and objectionable person. Should you declare, however, that you are an inquisitorial and peremptory homo sapiens, they will have no idea what you mean, but they will feel in their bones that you must be something wonderful.

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci used the term 'cultural hegemony' to describe the way in which ideas and concepts which benefit a dominant class are universalized. They become norms, adopted whole and unexamined, which shape our thinking. Perhaps we suffer from agricultural hegemony: what is deemed to be good for farmers or landowners is deemed, without question or challenge, to be good for everyone.

No place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable.

The country that always modeled social mobility for the rest of the world has become more class-ridden than recent aristocracies like Austria and Japan.

You are quite mad." The smoke had filled her eyes with tears. "If you were better born, I'd marry you.

But peasant's pride is lordling's shame.

Gods forbid they glimpse me near the high seat of the Arryns, they might think that I mean to sit in it. Cheeks born so low as mine must never aspire to such lofty cushions.

Those of the upper class began to look around for ways to get darker. It became the fashion for them to spend hours at the seashore basking naked in the sunshine and then to dash back, heavily bronzed, to their homes, and, preening themselves in their dusky skins, lord it over their paler, and thus less fortunate, associates. Beauty shops began to sell face powders named Poudre Nègre, Poudre le Egyptienne and L'Afrique.

the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation

and yes, the rich are never crazy, they're eccentric),

This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base.

In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.

Yes, there's a lot I have learned about flowers. They're just like people. Put too many together and they get on each other's nerves and start to wilt. Mix some kinds and you get what appears to be a dreadful form of class distinction.

The aristocrats on both sides of the Atlantic, whether from new or old wealth, have the manners and the morals of small-town gossips. And

There are ten commandments, right? Well, it's like an exam. You get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class.