Classes Quotes

The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers.

Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage.

We have democratized elitism in this country. There is no longer a clear pecking order, with the Vanderbilts and the Biddles and the Roosevelts at the top and everybody else down below. Everybody gets to be an aristocrat now. And the number of social structures is infinite. You can be an outlaw-biker aristocrat, a corporate-real-estate […]

Class is the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but is an inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV And you think you’re so clever and classless and free, But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see, A working class hero is something to be.

I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth. (Nashua, N.H., as quoted by Gail Collins in the New York Times, Feb. 1, 2000)

Out of their constitutional optimism, and because a class struggle is an abhorred and dangerous thing, the great American people are unanimous in asserting that there is no class struggle. And by “American people” is meant the recognized and authoritative mouth-pieces of the American people, which are the press, the pulpit, and the university. The […]

When the Hun is poor and down, he’s the humblest man in town, But once he climbs all holds the rod, He smites his fellow man and God.

There is no American who cannot hope to lift himself another notch or two, if he is good; there is absolutely no hard and fast impediment to his progress. But neither is there any American who doesn’t have to keep on fighting for whatever position he has; no wall of caste is there to protect […]