The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
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
I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
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
English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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
Character is that which reveals moral purpose, exposing the class of things a man chooses or avoids.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success.
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist
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
Men seldom rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Florentine Political Philosopher
Fit yourself for the best society, and then, never enter it.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
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 Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.
—Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian Revolutionary Leader
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
Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division ;and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.
—Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) Soviet Leader
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
We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It’s the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
—Ask Ann Landers (1918–2002) American Advice Columnist
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
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, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
Every attempt, by whatever authority, to fix a maximum of productive labor by a given worker in a given time is an unjust restriction upon his freedom and a limitation of his right to make the most of himself in order that he may rise in the scale of the social and economic order in which he lives. The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.
—Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American Philosopher, Diplomat, Educator
All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
—Arabic Proverb
An intelligent class can scarce ever be, as a class, vicious, and never, as a class, indolent. The excited mental activity operates as a counterpoise to the stimulus of sense and appetite.
—Edward Everett (1794–1865) American Politician, Scholar
Snobs talk as if they had begotten their own ancestors.
—Herbert Agar (1897–1980) American Journalist, Historian, Poet, Critic
Aristocracy is an atmosphere; it is sometimes a healthy atmosphere; but it is very hard to say when it becomes an unhealthy atmosphere. You can prove that a man is not the son of a king, or that he is not the delegate of a definite number of people. But you cannot prove that a man is not a gentleman.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, 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
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
Aristocrats: Fellows that wear downy hats and clean shirts-guilty of education and suspected of bank accounts.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
The working-class is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman’s heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
This miserable state is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian Poet, Philosopher
Upper classes are a nation’s past; the middle class is its future.
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher
I am his Highness dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Let him who expects one class of society to prosper in the highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side of his face can smile while the other is pinched.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
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
The true policy of a government is to make use a aristocracy, but under the forms and in the spirit of democracy.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
A second-class effort is a first-class mistake.
—William Arthur Ward (1921–94) American Author
For the duration of its collective life, or the time during which its identity may be assumed, each class resembles a hotel or an omnibus, always full, but always of different people.
—Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian-American Political Economist, Sociologist
Real good breeding, as the people have it here, is one of the finest things now going in the world. The careful avoidance of all discussion, the swift hopping from topic to topic, does not agree with me; but the graceful style they do it with is beyond that of minuets!
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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
All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.
—William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98) English Liberal Statesman, Prime Minister
Let the others have the charisma. I’ve got the class.
—George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American Republican Statesman, 41st President
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
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chinese Statesman