Quotes about class
page 6

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
E.M. Forster photo
Rigoberto González photo
George W. Bush photo
James Connolly photo

“A revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

As cited in Legendary Locals of Troy, New York (2011), p. 11

Isaac Asimov photo

“Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"By Jove!" in View from a Height (1963); often misquoted as "Jupiter plus debris".
General sources

Anthony Crosland photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

(Home Secretary) Churchill to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of ‘the feeble-minded and insane’; cited, as follows (excerpted from longer note) : It is worth noting that eugenics was not a fringe movement of obscure scientists but often led and supported, in Britain and America, by some of the most prominent public figures of the day, across the political divide, such as Julian Huxley, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, John Maynard Keynes and Theodore Roosevelt. Indeed, none other than Winston Churchill, whilst Home Secretary in 1910, made the following observation: [text of quote] (quoted in Jones, 1994: 9)., in ‘Race’, sport, and British society (2001), Carrington & McDonald, Routledge, Introduction, Note 4, p. 20 ISBN 0415246296
Early career years (1898–1929)

Ron Paul photo

“Ron Paul: What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people… As long as we live beyond our means we are destined to live beneath our means. And we have lived beyond our means because we are financing a foreign policy that is so extravagant and beyond what we can control, as well as the spending here at home. And we're depending on the creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit… So, if you want a healthy economy, you have to study monetary theory and figure out why it is that we're suffering. And everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad. It's always the poor people -- those who are on retired incomes -- that suffer the most. But the politicians and those who get to use the money first, like the military industrial complex, they make a lot of money and they benefit from it.
John McCain: Everybody is paying taxes and wealth creates wealth. And the fact is that I would commend to your reading, Ron, "Wealth of Nations," because that's what this is all about. A vibrant economy creates wealth. People pay taxes. Revenues are at an all time high.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP debate, Dearborn, Michigan, October 9, 2007 http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/NEWS02/71009073
2000s, 2006-2009

William Graham Sumner photo
William Osler photo

“There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

As quoted in Women in Medicine (1968) by Carol Lopate and Josiah Macy, Jr., p. 178.

Zeev Sternhell photo

“Like all self-respecting revolutionaries, Mussolini considered himself a Marxist. He regarded Marx as the ‘greatest theoretician of socialism’ and Marxism as the ‘scientific doctrine of class revolution.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p. 197

Emma Goldman photo
Paul Klee photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“…jumped-up commercials pretending, too late, to be the ruling class..”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Sean Spicer photo
Peter Kropotkin photo
Kazimir Malevich photo

“Papuans bored, but
Cottage second-class
Ticket. Park. Arch.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Kazimir Malevich, Jan. 1916, from his letter to Mikhail Matiushin; private archive, Frankfurt (transl. Todd Bludeau); as quoted by Vasilii Rakitin, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 26
Malevich' example of the new poetic structures (the 3 lines loosely match his painting 'Stantsiia bez ostanovki Kuntsevo' (Through Station: Kuntsevo), 1913)
1910 - 1920

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“We should not allow the word "democracy" to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)

François Mignet photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“It was once said by Abraham Lincoln that this Republic could not long endure half slave and half free; and the same may be said with even more truth of the black citizens of this country. They cannot remain half slave and half free. They must be one thing or the other. And this brings me to consider the alternative now presented between slavery and freedom in this country. From my outlook, I am free to affirm that I see nothing for the negro of the South but a condition of absolute freedom, or of absolute slavery. I see no half-way place for him. One or the other of these conditions is to solve the so-called negro problem. There are forces at work in both of these directions, and for the present that which aims at the re-enslavement of the negro seems to have the advantage. Let it be remembered that the labor of the negro is his only capital. Take this from him, and he dies from starvation. The present mode of obtaining his labor in the South gives the old master-class a complete mastery over him. I showed this in my last annual celebration address, and I need not go into it here. The payment of the negro by orders on stores, where the storekeeper controls price, quality, and quantity, and is subject to no competition, so that the negro must buy there and nowhere else–an arrangement by which the negro never has a dollar to lay by, and can be kept in debt to his employer, year in and year out–puts him completely at the mercy of the old master-class. He who could say to the negro, when a slave, you shall work for me or be whipped to death, can now say to him with equal emphasis, you shall work for me, or I will starve you to death… This is the plain, matter-of-fact, and unexaggerated condition of the plantation negro in the Southern States today.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

Edward Bellamy photo

“Equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture… have simply made us all members of one class.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 14.

“Class consciousness — yes, the theory is all too true. But there is a third class, that of Socrates, that of the inexorable.”

Ludwig Hohl (1904–1980) Swiss writer

Klassenbewusstsein, ja, die Theorie ist nur allzu richtig. Aber es gibt noch eine dritte Klasse, die des Sokrates, die der Unversöhnlichen.
Ludwig Hohl, Die Notizen (1981), II, 66, S. 70

Leo Tolstoy photo
Jacques Bertin photo
John Dankworth photo
John Derbyshire photo
Vitruvius photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Ray Comfort photo
Neville Chamberlain photo
Richard Cobden photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Mr. T photo

“Well, maybe Mr. T hacked the game and created a Mohawk class! Maybe, Mr. T's pretty handy with computers! Had that occurred to you, Mr. "Condescending" Director?!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

World of Warcraft Advert (2007)

Temple Grandin photo
Neal Boortz photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“There are Plebes in all classes.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

As quoted by Julien Coupat in Interview with Julien Coupat http://tarnac9.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/interview-with-julien-coupat/ (2009)

Friedrich Engels photo
Eric Foner photo
Nick Griffin photo

“In Britain and indeed the entire West, today, we are part way through a process – artificially imposed by a dogmatic liberal ruling class - that is steadily destroying the very possibility of preserving our racial and cultural differences, and the unique nations to which they have given rise.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The BNP: Anti-asylum protest, racist sect or power-winning movement? http://web.archive.org/web/20030605150634/http://www.bnp.org.uk/articles/race_reality.htm

Friedrich Engels photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Marty Feldman photo
Dana Gioia photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'.
"Publisher's Statement", in the first issue of National Review (19 November 1955) http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/buckley200406290949.asp.

“A bohemian imitates the manners of the class below him.”

John Leonard (1939–2008) American critic, writer, and commentator

"Snapshots" (p. 135)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Paul Krugman photo
Arthur Scargill photo
Peter Thiel photo
Roger Ebert photo
Vladimir Lenin photo

“Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.”

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

Collected Works, Vol. 21, pp. 158–164.
Collected Works

Henri Nouwen photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo

“History was what had happened; class was something you read about in a book.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Odysseus Abroad (2014)

Irving Kristol photo

“It was a new kind of class war — the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

The Question of Liberty in America
About California's 1978 Proposition 13 which limits tax increases without public approval
1970s

John Sloan photo

“[on w:Diego Rivera:].. the one artist on this continent who is in the class of the old masters.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

Source: Brooks, Van Wyck. John Sloan: a Painter's Life. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1955, p. 170

Johann Hari photo
Phillip Blond photo
Thorstein Veblen photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Carl Sagan photo
Clement Attlee photo
Wilkie Collins photo

“I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.”

Armadale - Vol. II [Collier, 1886] ( p. 130 https://books.google.com/books?id=v7sBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA130)
Also in Literature and Religion in Mid-Victorian England: From Dickens to Eliot by Carolyn Oulton [Springer, 2002, ISBN 0-230-50464-7] ( p. 136 https://books.google.com/books?id=abuADAAAQBAJ&pg=PA136)

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"On The Natural Inequality of Men" (January 1890) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/NatIneq.html
1890s

Norman Tebbit photo
John Rupert Firth photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Georgy Zhukov photo
Georgi Dimitrov photo

“No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself.”

Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949) Bulgarian politician

Ch. 1, The Class Character of Fascism https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s2.
The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism

Denis Diderot photo
Keshub Chunder Sen photo
Sarah Palin photo

“Katie Couric: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families, who are struggling with healthcare, housing, gas and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?Sarah Palin: That's why I say, I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out, but ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping tho— uh, oh, it's got to be all about job creation too, shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as— competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Interview with Katie Couric, The Early Show (), quoted in * 2008-09-25
Palin: ‘What The Bailout Does Is Help Those Who Are Concerned About Health Care Reform’
Ryan
Powers
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/09/25/29772/palin-bailout-healthcare/
2008, 2008 interviews with Katie Couric

Sri Aurobindo photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo

“The intellectual world is divided into two classes — dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity

Jarvis Cocker photo

“There isn't much I find interesting to write about in middle-class life.”

Jarvis Cocker (1963) English musician, singer-songwriter, radio presenter and editor

Interview with The Guardian http://www.acrylicafternoons.com/guardian99.html (1999)

Slavoj Žižek photo
Michael Greger photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
George Klir photo

“Wealthy people used to find democracy frightening. The reason was simple: the poor, once enfranchised, should be expected to soak the rich. This fear bred elite resistance to expanding the franchise, particularly beyond the propertied classes. Nor did this fear, and the reasoning behind it, go unnoticed on the political left.”

Ian Shapiro (1956) American political theorist

Ian Shapiro, Peter A. Swenson, and Daniela Donno, "Introduction" in Divide and deal : the politics of distribution in democracies (2008) edited by Ian Shapiro, Peter A. Swenson, and Daniela Donno.

Frank Harris photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Jean Baudrillard photo
Bernard Goldberg photo