Quotes About Lower classes

It may sound cruel...but...what makes a criminal is a disposition toward cruelty, a laziness and impatience that lead to taking from others, and cynicism that pretends there is a war going on, and that the victims are the result of a conflict that somebody else started. "[Caligula and DeSade] were expressing through the license of...power their outrage and boredom, and apparently meaningless lives. That these attitudes have filtered down to the lower classes is what is new.

cockneys (which would make it one of the few instances in modern linguistics in which a manner of utterance traveled upward from the lower classes).

The fourteenth century saw a transformation in the diet of the English lower classes from one composed mainly of cheap cereals, beans and pulses, with coarse black bread (made from rye or barley) and the occasional flitch of bacon to one with a high proportion of meat, particularly beef and mutton, and bread made from wheat.

The system, in its irrationality, has been driven by profit to build steel skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children's playgrounds , to give huge incomes to men who make dangerous or useless things, and very little to artists, musicians, writers, actors. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.

Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.

F]ashion — i.e., the latest, fashion — in all these things (social forms, apparel, aesthetic judgment etc.) affects only the upper class. Just as soon as the lower classes begin to copy their style, thereby crossing the line of demarcation the upper classes have drawn and destroying the uniformity of their coherence, the upper classes turn away from this style and adopt a new one, which in its turn differentiates them from the masses; and thus the game goes merrily on.

Capital may have no country, as Marx argued, but the lower classes not only have countries but cling to them. Economic issues and cultural issues merge, fear of the outsider rises, and the result is political pressure from the Right. This is not confined only to the failing countries. It is there in northern European countries as well, even Germany. Or the United States.

Madame Péricand thought reproachfully. She was one of those middle-class women who generally trust the lower classes. "They're not so bad if you know how to deal with them," she would say in the same condescending and slightly sad tone she used to talk of a caged animal. She was proud that she kept her servants for a long time. She insisted on looking after them when they were ill.

The lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances to be endured, sometimes placated, and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness, and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged.

The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

On the contrary, as there is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher, everything was given away, so to speak, before it was received, like water on thirsty soil; it was well that money came to him, for he never kept any, and besides he robbed himself.

We do not postpone the participation of the lower classes of our people in the profits of economic enterprise, and in other countries, they do postpone it. In the long run, I think our policy is better, and we stand by it.

Father is strength at home, strength in government and strength overseas. Mother represents upbringing, education, the spread of civilization. Children are the lower classes, the lower races, to be brought to maturity and then set free

To augment their misery, a contagious disorder of a dangerous nature spread through the land; and, rendered more virulent by the uncleanness, the indifferent food, and the wretched lodging of the lower classes, swept off many whose fate the survivors were tempted to envy, as exempting them from the evils which were to come.

My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.

after the Black Death, had materially changed the role of law. It was no longer an instrument of communal justice; it had instead become the machinery of exaction designed to control and discipline the lower classes.

There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion.

it is not enough for revolution that the exploited and oppressed masses should understand the impossibility of living in the old way and demand changes; it is essential for revolution that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. Only when the "lower classes" do not want the old way, and when the "upper classes" cannot carry on in the old way—only then can revolution triumph.

I don't know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don't feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me.

Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.

Despite today's notions of Atlantic City as a vacation spot for the wealthy, the resort could never have survived by catering to the upper class. It was the lower-middle and lower classes that were the lifeblood of Atlantic City. They comprised the great mass of visitors to the resort and the rates of most rooms were structured for them.