When we say a woman is of a certain social class, we really mean her husband or father is.
—Zoe Fairbairns (b.1948) British Feminist Novelist
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. There is no big man who has not felt small. Some men never feel small; but these are the few men who are.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Rank and riches are chains of gold, but still chains.
—Giovanni Ruffini (1807–81) Italian Writer, Patriot
A Status symbol is an instrument you clash when you want someone to know you are there.
—William Sansom (1912–76) British Novelist, Short Story Writer
Each class of society has its own requirements; but it may be said that every class teaches the one immediately below it; and if the highest class be ignorant, uneducated, loving display, luxuriousness, and idle, the same spirit will prevail in humbler life.
—Unknown
English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
What men prize most is a privilege, even if it be that of chief mourner at a funeral.
—James Russell Lowell (1819–91) American Poet, Critic
Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: “My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind”.
—B. C. Forbes (1880–1954) Scottish-born American Journalist, Publisher
Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
Aristocracy: What is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
I weigh the man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the metal better.
—William Wycherley (c.1640–1716) English Dramatist
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders for the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Historian, Political Leader, Explorer
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
—Friedrich Engels (1820–95) German Socialist Political Philosopher
Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
The traveler to the United States will do well to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet
Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Other lands have their vitality in a few, a class, but we have it in the bulk of our people.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist
I distrust great men…. I believe in aristocracy, though. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet…. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure and they can take a joke.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well for any great class and description of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them. A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its wants, or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.
—Friedrich Engels (1820–95) German Socialist Political Philosopher
All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
—Arabic Proverb
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist
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