Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Class

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

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 am his Highness dog at Kew; pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet

Throughout recorded time… there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other. The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable.
George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what’s left of them.
Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher

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

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 distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist

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

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.
William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98) English Liberal Statesman, Prime Minister

A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov’t exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.
Lionel Trilling (1905–75) American Literary Critic

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

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

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist

At a round table there is no dispute about place.
Italian Proverb

English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

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

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

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

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

People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything.
Moliere (1622–73) French Playwright

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *