class quotes

The widespread belief that Yuppies as a class would perish from Brie-cheese poisoning turned out to be over-optimistic.

-Jerry Adler
  'The Rise of the Overclass', in Newsweek, 31  Jul.

   Therearetwo ideas of government.Therearethose who believethat, if you will only legislatetomakethewell-to- do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislateto make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

-WilliamJennings Bryan
  Speech at the Democratic National Convention,10  Jul.

Lord Salisbury constitutes himself the spokesman of a class, of the class to which he himself belongs, who'toil not neither do they spin'.

-Joseph Chamberlain
  Speech, 30 Mar.

We have here an educated class 95 per cent of whom hate us.

- Anton Chekhov
  Of the situation in India. Letter to George V.

She even thinks that up in heaven Her class lies late and snores, While poor black cherubs rise at seven To do celestial chores.

- Countee Cullen
  On These I Stand,'For a Lady I Know'.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

-Washington Bailey
  Speech in Washington DC, commemorating the 24th anniversary of emancipation.

The demi-monde does not represent the crowd of courtesans, but the class of declassed women† It is divided from that of honest women by public scandal, and divided from that of the courtesans by money.

- Alexandre, fils Dumas
  On the first performance of his play La Dame aux came  lias, 20 Mar, the first recorded use of the phrase. Quoted in  Joanna Richardson The Courtesans (1967), p.227.

If there are indeed any iron laws of history, one of them is surely that in any major crisis of the capitalist system, a sector of the liberal middle class will shift to the left, and then shift smartly back again once the crisis has blown over.

-Terry Eagleton
  In the London Review of Books, 2 Dec.

I can never suppose this country so far lost to all ideas of self-importance as to be willing to grant America independence; if that could ever be adopted, I shall despair of this country being ever preserved froma state George of inferiority, and consequently falling into a very low class among the European states.

-George III
  Letter to Lord North,7 Mar.

But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen.

-William Hazlitt
Sketches and Essays (published1839),'Footmen'.

She gave him sex and he gave her class.

- Katharine Hepburn
Explaining the success of the Fred  Astaire and Ginger Rogers partnership.  Attributed. of

On a voulu, a'   tort, faire de la bourgeoisie une classe. La bourgeoisie est tout simplement la portion contente  e du peuple. Le bourgeois, c'est l'homme qui a maintenant le temps de s'asseoir.Une chaise n'est pas une caste. Humboldt Wrongly, one wanted to make the bourgeoisie a class. The bourgeoisie is simply a contented section of the public. A bourgeois is a man who now has the time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

-Victor Marie Hugo
  Les Mise  rables, vol.4, bk.1, ch.2.

A whore may be naked, but a mistress is nude.We are talking class.

-JamesJ Kilpatrick
  Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing  Art.

The businessman dealing with a large political question is reallya painfulsight.It doesseemtomethat businessmen, with a fewexceptions, are worse when theycometo deal with politics than men of any other class.

- Henry Cabot Lodge
  Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, 20 Oct.

   Thehistoryofall hithertoexisting society isthehistoryof class struggles.

- Karl Heinrich Marx
  The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels, translated by Samuel Moore,1888), opening sentence.

What I did that was new was to prove that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and that dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

- Karl Heinrich Marx
In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Correspondence (1934).

It may be asserted without scruple, that no otherclass of dependants have had their character so entirely distorted from its natural proportions by their relations with their masters.

-John Stuart Mill
  The Subjection of  Women, ch.1.

We ofthesinking middle class†havenothing to losebut our aitches.

- George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
  The Road to Wigan Pier, ch.13.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing- fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three-quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.

- George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, pt.4.

The interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interests of every other class in the community.

- David Ricardo
  Principles of Political Economy andTaxation.

Youdon't understand.Icould havehad class.Icould have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

- Budd Wilson Schulberg
  Lines spoken by Marlon Brando. On theWaterfront.

The healthy spirit of self-help created among working people would, more than any other measure, serve to raise them as a class; and this, not by pulling down others, but by levelling them up to a higher and still advancing standard of religion, intelligence, and virtue.

- Samuel Smiles
  Self-Help, ch.10.

Every known class of refusal was successfully exhibited. Onehorse endeavoured to climbtherailsintothe Grand Stand; another, having stoppeddeadatthecritical point, swung round, and returned in consternation to the starting-point, with hisrider hanging likea locket around his neck. Another, dowered with a sense of humour

-Martin Ross
Nicaraguan   dictator,   educated   in   the   US.   As   Chief   of   the National  Guard  he  established  himself  in  supreme  power  in the  early 1930s,  and  retained  it  until  assassinated,  when  the rule passed to his sons.

   The instinct of mankind warns it against accepting at their face value spiritual demands that cannot satisfy themselves by practical achievements. The road along which the organized workers, like any other class, must climb to power starts from the provision of a more effective economic service than their masters, as their grip upon industry becomes increasingly vacillating and uncertain, are able to supply.

- R(ichard) H(enry) Tawney
  TheAcquisitive Society.