Quotes About Class

We recall Macaulay's warning that democracy would collapse when the poor used their electoral power to rob rich Peter to pay lazy Paul. Polybius expressed the same idea in 130 BC: When

Social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest predictor of health, disease causation, and longevity in medical sociology.

Thus class boundaries were also cultural boundaries and in a very real sense constituted health boundaries as well.

he recognized slavery as a vital element of social morale, for even the lowliest white still could stand with pride knowing that he was the superior of a black. Slavery gave poor whites a social status nowhere else enjoyed by the peasantry, and as proof he argued that some of the most ardent supporters of slavery were whites too poor themselves to own slaves.

After some years of varied experience with the bodies of the rich and the poor a man finds little to distinguish between them, bulks them as one and bases his working judgements on other matters.

Though Marx's proletariat may be somewhat better fed than it was a century ago, its individual members have made little if any progress toward that personal liberty and independence on which the dignity of man is founded.

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

But those rich town ladies can change their minds. Poor folks cant.

He'd been dreaming about Mrs. Armbruster's class, fifth grade at Oliver North Elementary. They were about to be let out because LearningNet said there was too much Kansas City flu around to keep the kids in Virginia and Tennessee in school that week. They were all wearing these molded white paper masks the nurses had left on their seats that morning. Mrs. Armbruster had just explained the meaning of the word pandemic.

In our country for all her greatness there is one thing she cannot do and that is translate a person wholly out of one class into another. Perfect translation from one language into another is impossible. Class is the British language.

Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule.

He hasn't been in San Francisco for a number of years. He's looking forward to being in the city again. It's a town that knows how to have a good time, but without all the mess and craze of New York. San Francisco always does things with a touch of of class.

When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.

particularly on the bourgeoisie, which is

No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The

When the rich grow afraid, they get nasty.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

On the first day of class, the Visual Arts building reclined before me like an old brick whore, egging me to show her one, last, good time. I doubted I was up to the task, but regardless, I entered from the rear, just to give myself the slightest mental edge.

Sometimes, people can also project "snobbish thoughts." They do not have to make offensive and belittling remarks but their actions project negative thoughts that you are stupid, uncultured, useless or that you cannot be trusted. People with deep-seated feelings of inferiority but having a limited degree of success may feel the need to psychologically chop others down. Some people belonging to the so-called "upper social class" also do this.

The era of young adults graduating from high school, joining a union, and making a good living at a factory—working class on the job and middle class at home—has largely disappeared.

Pffft. Are you kidding? We learned it in gym class." Okay. That was a lie.

Did they like being maids & butlers? Before you answer this consider everything you've ever read about English history after Robin Hood and before he Who. Your choices were: serving, being served, being killed by Jack the Ripper. So, the employee class made the best of it and got with the program. It was indoor work, after all. And as a wise man once observed, "You're gonna hafta serve somebody." (Bob Dylan, C. 1497-1580). And it beat mining.

That's the funny thing about The Money. They'll gift each other artifact and libation equal to most people's annual income. But anyone who ain't them's gotta work for it.

The trade union leaders filed into the Great Parlour at Chequers and took their seats around the polished mahogany table. Before he sat down Bill Knight of the Engineers' Union caressed the oak wall panelling. "This is what I call class," he said and as he spoke his hand drifted to the blue and white porcelain on the mantelpiece. Despite impeccable proletarian origins most union leaders quickly adapted to the comforts of high office.