Selected class quotes

1. Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

2. Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.

3. We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.

4. Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

5. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

6. Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.

7. As we ascend the social ladder, viciousness wears a thicker mask.

8. That's the public-school system all over. They may kick you out, but they never let you down.

9. Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums who find prison so soul-destroying.

10. The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

11. Simplicity is a great element of good breeding.

12. I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

13. You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

14. Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.

15. Writing, madam, is a mechanic part of wit. A gentleman should never go beyond a song or a billet.

16. Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

17. Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

18. I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America in the middle of the last century.

19. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.

20. Hospitality still survives among foreigners, although it is buried under false pride among the poorest Americans.

21. The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.

22. Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

23. There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

24. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

25. Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

26. 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.

27. No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

28. About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.

29. The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.

30. The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.

31. If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself.

32. It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

33. The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot.

34. Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class - and so tenaciously withheld from the working women - brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community.

35. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

36. That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

37. My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

38. At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.

39. I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

40. It's the middle class that feels the luxury of being able to have causes.

41. Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only 'frail.' They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all--liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.

42. Then soon after my delight with Stein was jolted; a political critic of the reddest persuasion condemned Stein in a newspaper article, calling her decadent, implying that she reclined upon a silken couch in Paris smoking hashish day and night and was a hopeless prey to hallucinations. I asked myself if I were wrong or crazy or decadent. Being simple minded, I decided upon a very practical way of determining the worth of the prose of Stein, a prose I had accepted without qualms or distress. I gathered a group of semi-illiterate Negro workers into a Chicago basement and read them Melanctha aloud. They were enthralled, interrupting me constantly to tell where and when they had met such a strange and melancholy gal. I was convinced and Miss Stein's book never bothered or frightened me after that. If Negro stockyard workers could understand the stuff when it was read aloud to them, then surely anybody else could if they wanted to read with their ears as well as their eyes. For the prose of Stein is but the repetitive contemporaneousness of our living speech woven into a grammarless form of narrative...

43. ...so long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal: and that's to make sure that the rich folk are happy -- because unless they are, nobody else is going to get anything. So if you're a homeless person sleeping in the streets of Manhattan, let's say, your first concern must be that the guys in the mansions are happy -- because if they're happy, then they'll invest, and the economy will work, and things will function, and then maybe something will trickle down to you somewhere along the line. But if they're not happy, everything's going to grind to a halt, and you're not even going to get anything trickling down.

44. For 2 people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And 2 people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting

45. The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide What became of the working class? Nike, Reebok, Adidas Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy Hooray for the 21st Century

46. There are few more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap Yeah, we'll die in the class we were born That's a class of our own, my love

47. Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing nothing but holes and millions of them Kokol: Living in holes Polpoch: Dying in holes Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies Rossignol: and holes in our clothes

48. While the rich kids is drivin Benz/I'm still tryin to hold on to my survivin friends

49. (On why rich people should be exempt from security)You know that Atta guy? He wasn't sitting in first class okay? Just before he cooked that airplane into the World Trade Center, he wasn't having a Momosa and a bagel with cream cheese, okay?

50. C'mon down to Ted's of Beverly Hills Steakhouse, I want to tell you its a very classy experience; we'd like you to wear a suitcoat if you wouldn't mind. We have had a high incidence of cardigan sweaters. Please look like you belong in our restaurant when you come to our restaurant, we'll give you a great steak...

51. The great unwashed.

52. 'For it must needs that offences come, but woe to him through whom the offence cometh.' The crimes of the future are the harvests sown of the ruling classes of the present. Woe to the tyrant who shall cause the offense! Sometimes I dream of this social change. I get a streak of faith in Evolution, and the good in man. I paint a gradual slipping out of the now, to that beautiful then, where there are neither kings, presidents, landlords, national bankers, stockbrokers, railroad magnates, patentright monopolists, or tax and title collectors; where there are no over-stocked markets or hungry children, idle counters and naked creatures, splendor and misery, waste and need. I am told this is farfetched idealism, to paint this happy, povertyless, crimeless, diseaseless world; I have been told I 'ought to be behind the bars' for it. Remarks of that kind rather destroy the white streak of faith. I lose confidence in the slipping process, and am forced to believe that the rulers of the earth are sowing a fearful wind, to reap a most terrible whirlwind. When I look at this poor, bleeding, wounded World, this world that has suffered so long, struggled so much, been scourged so fiercely, thorn-pierced so deeply, crucified so cruelly, I can only shake my head and remember:

53. John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre - a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.

54. It is hardly possible to over-calculate the evils accruing to individuals and to society in general from this custom, gradually increasing, of late and ultra-prudent marriages. Parents bring up their daughters in luxurious homes, expecting and exacting that the home to which they transfer them should be of almost equal ease; forgetting how next to impossible it is for such a home to be offered by any young man of the present generation, who has to work his way like his father before him. Daughters, accustomed to a life of ease and laziness, are early taught to check every tendency towards 'a romantic attachment' - the insane folly of loving a man for what he is, rather than for what he has got; of being content to fight the worldly battle hand-in-hand - with a hand that is worth clasping, rather than settle down in comfortable sloth, protected and provided for in all external things. Young men ... But words fail to trace the lot of enforced bachelorhood, hardest when its hardship ceases to be consciously felt. ~ Ch. 10

55. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people...The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.

56. If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.

57. Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

58. The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

59. If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

60. 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.

61. 'I've done you a piece of good service, Nancy,' he began: then seeing me, he acknowledged my presence by a slight bow. I should have been invisible to Hatfield, or any other gentleman of those parts. 'I've delivered your cat,' he continued, 'from the hands, or rather the gun, of Mr. Murray's gamekeeper.'

62. All men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

63. Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws: the rich and the poor.

64. 'I was told,' continued Egremont, 'that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension.'

65. The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

66. To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

67. The slaving Poor are incapable of any Principles: Gentlemen may be converted to true Principles, by Time and Experience. The middling Rank of Men have Curiosity and Knowledge enough to form Principles, but not enough to form true ones, or correct any Prejudices that they may have imbib'd: And 'tis among the middling Rank, that Tory Principles do at present prevail most in England.

68. People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity. (from inside the cover)

69. Back in the '40s and '50s they took sex out. I don't know, the Noel Coward -sort of 'Into Which We Serve'-type films: [In a posh accent] 'Darling, I'm off to the war.' 'Don't go, darling, don't go to the war.' 'I must go to the war, darling, they won't start without me.' 'Don't go, darling, it's dangerous- rat-tat-tat boom, and all those noises.' 'I must go, darling, it's my duty as a Cockney man.' All the accents were really fucked, weren't they? 'We, as East enders - we as people from the East End of London, the working class of London, we must go with our strange accents: go to the war. I must do it.' If that's the East End of London accent, then what's a posh accent? '(exaggerated posh accent, complete nonsense)' said a posh person to me today: He also said, '(more nonsense)' And I believe him!

70. Economy was always 'elegant', and money-spending always 'vulgar and ostentatious'; a sort of sour-grapeism, which made us very peaceful and satisfied.

71. The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

72. The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' - or by that of its 'advance guard,' the Communist Party. Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice.

73. There has never been a free people, a civilized nation, a real republic on this earth. Human society has always consisted of masters and slaves, and the slaves have always been and are today, the foundation stones of the social fabric. Wage-labor is but a name; wage-slavery is the fact.

74. The very moment a workingman begins to do his own thinking he understands the paramount issue, parts company with the capitalist politician and falls in line with his own class on the political battlefield.

75. The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism, the birth of freedom, the sunrise of civilization.

76. First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, deny the class struggle and this almost infallibly fixes their status as friends of capital and enemies of labor. They insist that they can serve both; but the fact is obvious that only one can be served and that one at the expense of the other. Mr. Roosevelt's whole political career proves it.

77. I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses - you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

78. Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

79. On atteint aisement une ame vivante a travers les crimes, les vices les plus tristes, mais la vulgarite est infranchissable.

80. There still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank. They designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as 'the powerful,' 'the masters,' 'the commanders') or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as 'the rich,' 'the possessors' (this is the meaning of 'Arya,' and of corresponding words in Iranian and Slavic).

81. The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part,and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town.

82. Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

83. People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.

84. Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

85. His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants' hall.

86. If the young leddy was so careless o' insulting other folks' ancestors, it proves she has nane o' her ain; for them that has china plates themsel's is the maist careful no to break the china plates of others.

87. You could not shock her more than she shocks me; Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass. It makes me most uncomfortable to see An English spinster of the middle class Describe the amorous effects of 'brass,' Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety The economic basis of society.

88. Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.

89. How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?

90. I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

91. In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest-usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation-and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

92. At my house dinner easily could have consisted of a bologna sandwich, and then you'd split. You might come back later and grab a few peanuts, and then you'd split again. That was it. I would go to my buddy Sal's house for dinner. I couldn't understand what was going on with everyone sitting down together. I'll never forget seeing romaine lettuce for the first time. I thought it was weird - I was afraid of it. There was salad and appetizers and soup. I had no idea about that. I grew up on hillbilly food. (2004)

93. 'You know the best medicine go to people thats payed/If Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS and all the broke motherfuckers passed away/ You tellin me if my grandma's in the NBA, right now she would be ok?/ But since she was just a secretary workin' for the church for thirty-five years/things supposed to stop right here?'

94. A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world.

95. In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.

96. Every peasant has a lawyer inside of him, just as every lawyer, no matter how urbane he may be, carries a peasant within himself.

97. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

98. Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million.'

99. For just experience tells; in every soil, That those that think must govern those that toil.

100. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox-the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.