Quotes about Class

Snobbery works in both directions—if you're rich, thinking you're better than those who aren't is as equally lame as being broke and thinking you're better than those who are rich.

You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into...it is as much as you can expect from a poor man's daughter.

Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them.

I'm a Marxist.

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

Peace requires the capacity to forgive. Peace requires a readiness to share generously. Peace requires the violation of strict class stratification in society. Peace requires attentiveness to the vulnerable and the unproductive. Peace requires humility in the face of exaltation, being last among those who insist on being first and denying self in the interest of the neighbor. These are all practices that mark his presence in his society.

Propertied persons typically have large estates and freedom of movement through the society. At the same time, the property of the rich has the effect of crowding and confining the less propertied. The very poor are typically restricted to narrow geographical limits and are regarded as aliens outside them.

The anger from Occupy Wall Street is coming from this simple fact: America no longer seems to be a place where you can work your way up, from rags to riches, from lower class to middle class to upper class.

I'm a warrior for the middle class.

I listened again for a voice. But there was no voice tonight, just my obedience. No professional carpenters, just willing bodies. No last-minute detours off the interstate, just eight seats reserved in economy class.

The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous.

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.