Quotes about class

A collection of quotes on the topic of class, work, working, people.

Quotes about class

“Education is the result of self-learning, being taught by one or more people. Learning is the key word here. Schools, colleges and universities only divide you into CLASSES according to your level of understanding.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People, Education, School, Understanding

“The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?”

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher (1932). “Those Damned Nazis,” (Nazi propaganda pamphlet).
1930s

Life, War, People, Communication

“The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

People, Education, Way, Victory

“I think it's rarely about what you actually learn in class it's mostly about things that you stay motivated to go and continue to do on your own.”

Maryam Mirzakhani (1977–2017) Iranian mathematician

Maryam Mirzakhani press conference after winning Field's Medal | august 2014

Motivation, Thinking, Learning

“In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life. The”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
Context: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Life, Peace, Democracy, Freedom

“When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: On the Foreign Policy of the Soviet State

Support, Country

“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Nature

“Traditionally Marxism attracts the oppressed. This, however, is not the case in the Arab nation… The socialist programs in Arab history did not always come from the poor, but from men who had known no oppression and became the leaders of the poor. The Arab nation has never been as class-conscious as other nations.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

n.d., quoted in Saddam Hussein: a political biography (2002) by Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi.

Men, History

“The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Fear, Communication, Thinking, Forgetting

“Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Knowledge, Tree

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: 1910s, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (pg. 118)

People, Business, Learning

“I was the new boy. It was like joining a new class at school where everybody knows everybody else but me.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

School, Boy

“A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: Why I Write

Sun, Country

“Especially dangerous on the musical front in the present class war.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

An official Soviet verdict on Rachmaninoff's music, delivered in 1931; cited from Percy A. Scholes The Oxford Companion to Music, 5th edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1944) p. 775.
Criticism

War, Music

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

From a speech (1933)

Business, Time, Country

“Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 235

Women

“In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

"The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism" October 19, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ&t=218

“The mass media are class media.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Fabricating a "Cultural Democracy", p. 107
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

The Junius Pamphlet http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/index.htm (1915) Context: Bourgeois class domination is undoubtedly an historical necessity, but, so too, the rising of the working class against it. Capital is an historical necessity, but, so too, its grave digger, the socialist proletariat.

“Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Table of Contents, Fascism
Blackshirts and Reds (1997)

Democracy

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Don't Let Colonel Blimp Ruin the Home Guard" article for the Evening Standard, 8 January 1941
Context: Even as it stands, the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. THAT RIFLE HANGING ON THE WALL OF THE WORKING-CLASS FLAT OR LABOURER'S COTTAGE, IS THE SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY. IT IS OUR JOB TO SEE THAT IT STAYS THERE.

Democracy

“I particularly approve of and welcome the arrest of millionaire saboteurs in the first and second-class railway carriage.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Money, Communication, Thinking

“I'm not so fond of people myself, Evvy, but I took my vows for a reason. There are two classes of people in the world, the destroyers and the builders. I want to build, not destroy. You need to ask yourself who you're going to be.”

Tamora Pierce book Melting Stones

Source: Melting Stones

People, World

“An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

Truth, World, Way, Learning

“There is a saying in the Islands. Beware the women of the warrior class, for all they touch is both decorative and deadly.-Yuki”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

Women

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes relentlessly persecute them, and treat their teachings with malicious hostility, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating the revolutionary doctrine of its content, vulgarizing it and blunting its revolutionary edge.'”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)
Source: The State and Revolution

Death, Hostility, Time

“Classes will dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

“I cannot waste time in these classes and these books, memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Books, Time

“The unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.”

Frantz Fanon book The Wretched of the Earth

Source: The Wretched of the Earth

People, Education, Decision

“Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: State and Revolution

“Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries – revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

People, World, Country

“We deny the existence of two classes, because there are many more than two classes. We deny that human history can be explained in terms of economics. We deny your internationalism. That is a luxury article which only the elevated can practise, because peoples are passionately bound to their native soil.
We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Speech (21 June 1921), Ion Smeaton Munro, Through Fascism to World Power: A History of the Revolution in Italy, 27 January 2008 http://books.google.com/books?id=DML39RmvsmYC&pg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9CWe+deny+your+internationalism%22+mussolini&lr=&sig=gTHVLgfaIKPCn_jW8f0phjDKrAI, 1920s

People, History, Sense, Passion

“There are three classes of friendship and enmity, since men are so disposed to one another either by preference or by need or through pleasure and pain.”

Ptolemy (100–170) Greco-Egyptian writer and astronomer of Alexandria

Book IV, sec. 7
Tetrabiblos

Men, Pain, Friendship, Pleasure

“Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist. 'Don't talk to me about the lower classes,' she used to say. 'I hate them. They smell.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

And Ravelston adored her.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Hate, Reading

“I care not what religion, club, area or class you come from, nor what bit of colored cloth you wave as a flag. WE are ALL under deadly attack by colored hordes which outnumber us more than seven to one, led by a filthy Jewish, Communist conspiracy!”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy
1962, White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy

Religion, Color, Clothes

“I would not let her work until she was eighteen, and believe me, since the time she was being strolled down the street in her stroller, people were saying, “Can I use her in my commercial? Can I put her in my movie?” “No!” But I did let her take any class that she wanted to take. Singing, acting, dancing…”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

On raising her daughter, Chynna Philips, The Huffington Post (August 25, 2016)

People, Singing, Time, Dance

“No one has the right to make a boy learn Latin, because learning is a matter for individual choice; but if in a Latin class, a boy fools all the time, the class should throw him out, because he interferes with the freedom of others.”

A.S. Neill book Summerhill

Source: Summerhill (1960), p. 356

Fools, Boy, Freedom, Learning

“If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable – and this is why we are the enemies of the State.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: "Statism and Anarchy" (1873)

“Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the Black masses in the United States and the U. S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U. S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U. S. monopoly capitalist class.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

“ A New Storm Against Imperialism https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_80.htm” (1968)

People, Support

“Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not only reading books, however, but is rather something that we study to integrate with our own way of life.
One who is born into the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty, and, listening to just one of his dictums each day, will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the better.
Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how shallow and untalented this monk is.”

Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 95

Life, Wisdom, Books, Way

“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"The Popular and the Realistic" (written 1938, published 1958), as translated in Brecht on Theatre (1964) edited and translated by John Willett.

History, Question

“The class struggle tactics is not only more correct in principle; it is also more practical and successful than compromise tactics.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Success

“It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle … There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Way, Understanding, Time, Fight

“Sex class is so deep as to be invisible. Or it may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labour force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child - That? Why you can't change that! You must be out of your mind!”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

is the closest to the truth. http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/firestone-shulamith/dialectic-sex.htm The Dialectic of Sex (1970)

Women, Truth, Sex, Appearance

“Like other women writers of my class, I am expected to tame my talent to suit the comfort of my family.”

Kamala Surayya (1934–2009) Indian author

Kamala Suraiyya Das (Wages of Love)

Women, Family

“The principal means of realizing it will be the formation of an alliance between philosophers and the working classes, for which both are alike prepared by the negative and positive progress of the last five centuries. The direct object of their combined action will be to set in motion the force of Public Opinion.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 153

“The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Food, Imagination, Chance, Clothes

“Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and quite ready to take to crime if he saw a good opportunity. He refused on principle to be thrifty. In the summer he saved nothing, spending his surplus earnings on drink, as he did not care about women. If he was penniless when winter came on, then society must look after him. He was ready to extract every penny he could from charity, provided that he was not expected to say thank you for it. He avoided religious charities, however, for he said it stuck in his throat to sing hymns for buns. He had various other points of honour; for instance, it was his boast that never in his life, even when starving, had he picked up a cigarette end. He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

On "Bozo", in Ch. 30
Down and out in Paris and London (1933)

Life, Women, Drink, Winter

“In this world, not only samurai, but also servants down through the lower classes are born with different characters, and people are apt to misjudge them by appearance. First, men with discrimination will be viewed as schemers; second, men with deep far-sightedness will be seen as cowards; and third, men with rough behaviour will be mistaken for real warriors. These are great errors.”

Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 92

Men, People, World, Error

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Money, War, Thinking, Country

“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

The Road to Wigan Pier Diary 6-10 February (1936)

Help, Fight

“If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment in the strict sense of the word.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 3

Sense, Country

“To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

3 CONSPIRACY: PHOBIA AND REALITY, The JFK Assassination II: p. 174
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

People, World, Effort

“The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight…”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

"The Politics of Mass Strikes and Unions"; Collected Works 2 
Context: The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

Books, History, Learning, Fight

“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
Context: Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.

Fraud

“Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
Context: I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers. Even if I had the power, I would not wish to interfere in Soviet domestic affairs: I would not condemn Stalin and his associates merely for their barbaric and undemocratic methods. It is quite possible that, even with the best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the conditions prevailing there.
But on the other hand it was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. Moreover, the workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand that the USSR of today is altogether different from what it was in 1917. It is partly that they do not want to understand (i. e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly that, being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them.

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: Dickens's attitude is easily intelligible to an Englishman, because it is part of the English puritan tradition, which is not dead even at this day. The class Dickens belonged to, at least by adoption, was growing suddenly rich after a couple of centuries of obscurity. It had grown up mainly in the big towns, out of contact with agriculture, and politically impotent; government, in its experience, was something which either interfered or persecuted. Consequently it was a class with no tradition of public service and not much tradition of usefulness. What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.

Money, Communication, Success

“For any comedian, your life informs your point of view, the way you see the world. My comedy comes through the prism of race or class, because those are two worlds that collided for me growing up. And I guess that’s served me well, because those themes cross over countries and continents. We’re all still dealing with those issues today.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

On how his upbringing informs his comedy in “Life’s Work: An Interview with Trevor Noah” https://hbr.org/2018/09/lifes-work-an-interview-with-trevor-noah in Harvard Business Review (September-October, 2018) Personal life

Life, World, Way, Country

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extend, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people live under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint, the British ruling class had their points.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Men, People, Secret, Peace

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. But in any calculation about it one has got to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act together in moments of supreme crisis. It is the only great country in Europe that is not obliged to drive hundreds of thousands of its nationals into exile or the concentration camps.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Feeling, Sun, Country

“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle-class world, and everything outside, these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

A Collection of Essays, pp. 65-66
Charles Dickens (1939)

World

“During the examinations, the students are not tested for their mental and physical strengths before entering the exams hall, or class.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. [...] There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, 'OK, we're going to land somewhere safely, don't worry.’”

Mark Wahlberg (1971) American actor, television producer and rap musician

Source: Mark on the September 11 attacks in a 2012 interview

“But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.”

Karl Marx book The Communist Manifesto

Source: The Communist Manifesto

“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hours, and the books of all Time.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Sesame and Lilies

Books, Time

“There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Life

“New lesson, class. Most monsters will vaporize when sliced with a celestial bronze sword. This change is perfectly normal, and will happen to you right now if you don't BACK OFF!" - Percy”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Change

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Men, Silence

“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. VIII
Following the Equator (1897)

“Braininess is not attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

Source: The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose

“Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior (1970), p. 103

Feeling, Idea

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France.
Misattributed

“The Girl With Many Eyes
One day in the park
I had quite a surprise.
I met a girl
who had many eyes.

She was really quite pretty
(and also quite shocking!)
and I noticed she had a mouth,
so we ended up talking.

We talked about flowers,
and her poetry classes,
and the problems she'd have
if she ever wore glasses.

It's great to know a girl
who has so many eyes,
but you really get wet
when she breaks down and cries.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Girl, Flowers, Problem

“If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

People

“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

Raymond Chandler book The High Window

Source: The High Window

“The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Letter from Lenin to Gorky https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/g2aleks.html, Sept. 15, 1919 1910s Source: The Letters Of Lenin

Education, Fight

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

People

“Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Teachers

“Another two-bowl morning?" - Damien Maslin asking Zoey Redbird if her love of cereal was the reason she was almost late for Vamp Soc class”

P. C. Cast book Betrayed

Source: Betrayed

Love

“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Teachers

“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.”

Steven Pinker book The Blank Slate

Source: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Food

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Drink, Funny

“You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D's in school. Well guess what, I get F's!!!”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

School

“Life is a classroom -- only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Life

“I figured all your classes were stuff like Slaughter 101 and Beheading for Beginners.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary to Jace, pg. 97
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

“The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)

Men, Money, Exercises, Change

“For a large class of cases — though not for all — in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 43, this has often been quoted as simply: The meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Lord Grey de Wilton (3 October 1873), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 5 (1920), p. 262.

Thinking, Country

“The essential in Christianity, past, present and future, is loving Christ and one another, and if the Quaker finds God in the silence and the Salvation Army in the band, the Roman Catholic in the Mass and the Baptist in immersion; if the High Anglican likes incense and ceremonial, and the Methodist puts his emphasis on personal experience, the fellowship of the authentic class meeting and Charles Wesley’s hymns, why talk of disunity?”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29

Love, God, Silence, Past

“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship … To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic … The Constitution of this republic should make the special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

As quoted by Terry Dorian, Total Health and Restoration: A 180-Day Journey (2002), p. 49. Other versions include: [The] Constitution of this republic should make special provisions for medical freedom as well as religious freedom ... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privilege to another will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. They are fragments of monarchy and have no place in a republic. [in Robert L. Schwartz, "Laetrile: The Battle Moves into the Courtroom," American Bar Association Journal, February 1979, p. 226, no citation given] Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers. Laws restricting the practice of the healing art to one class of physicians and denying equal privileges to others, constitutes the Bastilles of Medicine, for they prevent progress. They are relics of Monarchy, and therefore have no place in a Republic. [in Thomas Morgan, "National Board of Health. The Other Side of the Question, As It Appears to Thomas Morgan," Youngstown Vindicator, 27 January 1911, p. 6] This quote is often cited with regards to Rush, and can rarely be found attributed to his autobiography, but does not exist in that book http://books.google.com/books?id=EkTM9Kn9F4IC&q=%22into+the+constitution%22#v=onepage&q=%22into%20the%20constitution%22&f=false http://hpy.sagepub.com/content/16/1/89.abstract. The quote contains words and phrasing that seem anachronistic to late 18th century America. Misattributed

Men, Law, Art, Freedom

“Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

The Civil War in France : "The Third Address" (May 1871) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

People, Search, Communication, Business

“I’m here to tell you that, yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years. We need to keep making our streets safer and our criminal justice system fairer — our homeland more secure, our world more peaceful and sustainable for the next generation. We’re not done perfecting our union, or living up to our founding creed that all of us are created equal; all of us are free in the eyes of God.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)

God, World, Education, Peace

“Treating women as second-class citizens is a bad tradition. It holds you back. There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence. There’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation. There’s no place in civilized society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may date back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century. These are issues of right and wrong -- in any culture. But they’re also issues of success and failure. Any nation that fails to educate its girls or employ its women and allowing them to maximize their potential is doomed to fall behind in a global economy.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)

Women, Marriage, Children, Education

“I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavour to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to General James Longstreet (29 October 1867), as quoted in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1924), p. 269.
1860s

Men, People, Law, Intelligence

“China is now suffering from poverty, not from unequal distribution of wealth. Where there are inequalities of wealth, the methods of Marx can, of course, be used; a class war can be advocated to destroy the inequalities. But in China, where industry is not yet developed, Marx's class war and dictatorship of the proletariat are impracticable.”

Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) Chinese physician, politician and revolutionary

Capital and the State (1924)

War, Suffering, Wealth

“It is unnecessary for me to state that I shall support all those measures, the object of which is to elevate the moral and social condition of the Working Classes, by lessening their hours of toil—by improving their means of health—and by cultivating their intelligence. These are objects which, it is not unpleasing for me to remember, I endeavoured, in common with some of my friends, to advance, before they engaged the attention of Governments, or were supported by triumphant Parliamentary majorities.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Address to the electors of Buckinghamshire (25 May 1847), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 838.
1840s

Health, Intelligence, Support

“Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work as long as politics don’t get in the way. We can’t slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

Health, Family, Way, Business