Blue Collar Snobbery Quotes

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy). ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Blue radiated psychic energy for others, but touch was where she gained hers back. She was always hugging her mother or holding Noah's hand or linking her elbow in Adam's or resting her boots on Ronan's legs as they sat on the sofa. Touching Gansey's neck just between his hair and his collar. This ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Astrid Dane. . . Her long colorless hair was woven back into a braid, and her porcelain skin bled straight into the edges of her tunic. Her entire outfit was fitted to her like armor; the collar of her shirt was high and rigid, guarding her throat, and the tunic itself ran from chin to wrist to waist, less out of a sense of modesty, Kell was sure, than protection. Below a gleaming silver belt, she wore fitted pants that tapered into tall boots (rumor had it that a man once spat at her for refusing to wear a dress; she'd cut off his lips). The only bits of color were the pale blue of her eyes and the greens and reds of the talismans that hung from her neck and wrists and were threaded through her hair. . .
"I smell something sweet," she said. She'd been gazing up at the ceiling. Now her eyes wandered
down and landed on Kell. "Hello, flower boy. ~ V.E Schwab

I grew up in a modest neighborhood just outside of Los Angeles. It was an industrial community of blue-collar, working people ... some of the hardest-working people I've ever met. ~ Hilda Solis

Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security. ~ Christopher Lasch

Montreal is a great town. There's equal parts blue-collar town. ~ Jay Baruchel

There's so much built-up camaraderie and sacrifice, and football is such a tough man's game. I think that's why it's so popular. That's why so many blue-collar communities and people can really feel attracted to this because it is a blue-collar struggle that football players go through. ~ Troy Polamalu

JACKSON'S DARK BROWN HAIR curled up on his shirt collar. Black lashes and heavy brows framed his blue eyes. A few crow's-feet around his eyes were the only sign that he'd just passed his fortieth birthday and they were minimized in the dim restaurant lights. His jeans were creased and stacked up over his highly polished black boots just the right way. Waitresses stopped what they were doing and gazed at him over their shoulders as he passed. Their ~ Carolyn Brown

Like every other house-renting, paycheck-to-paycheck, heel dragging working American, it wouldn't matter if I stepped in it by accident or was pushed, or simply whiffed it as I walked by. With the powers in play, guilt or innocence had nothing to do with anything. ~ James Anderson

The uncle ignored Gracie's father. 'In any event,' he went on, 'when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment -- to rot -- it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge. ~ Tom Robbins

I also have always liked the monster within idea. I like the zombies being us. Zombies are the blue-collar monsters. ~ George A. Romero

I say that in jest a little bit, but Donald Trump is a blue collar guy with a balance sheet. That's the way he likes to have fun. ~ Donald Trump, Jr.

My mother claims she didn't raise her son to settle down with a construction foreman who operates his own hardware chain. Even with the M.B.A. from Harvard. But it's not really the blue-collar thing that crawled up her ass. She and Clayton haven't agreed on anything since she found out he makes more money than she does. ~ Steve Kluger

I did a bunch of blue-collar jobs, because I knew I'd wind up with a white-collar job at some point, and I wanted to, I don't know, I just wanted to taste life. I dug graves for a while, I worked as a stock boy in a big department store, I worked in a bank. ~ Graydon Carter

Blue collar workers cannot hire each other. White collar workers cannot hire each other. You have to have a businessman or a businesswomen, a business owner to hire you. And you cannot make the environment so unfriendly to them or so unprofitable or so burdensome that they go out of business,because if they go out of business, you are out of a job. ~ Duncan Hunter

The workplace revolution that transformed the lives of blue-collar workers in the 1970s and 1980s is finally reaching the offices and cubicles of the white-collar workers. ~ Tom Peters

If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in the pockets than all the property of capitalists. . . ~ Howard Zinn

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife. ~ Virginia Postrel

A picture of me as this super affable sales guy gets painted, but in actuality, I'm pretty driven by hard work and love working with teams. What people discount is, I grew up in a very small blue-collar town in Massachusetts and have basically scrapped my way career wise. ~ Tim Armstrong

We didn't do anything fancy. We just played blue-collar baseball. ~ Lou Piniella

I have been lusting after my wife's son since the day I met him. Tall and thin, the boy has yet to grow into his long arms and legs. Jet black hair like his biological father, it falls just to below his collar. His eyes are so blue I could see myself in them if I allowed myself to get close enough. I haven't done that. Yet. ~ Candi Kay

My mom was the picture of the blue-collar mom: Two and three and four jobs to make sure that me and my sister never needed, that was her thing. ~ Ne-Yo

It felt like the opening line to life's little joke: an immigrant with a law degree walks into a tire factory to work a blue-collar job in a small town. ~ Phuc Tran

I go home at the end of the day and I rarely talk about what I did that day. So my wife's experience is just like that of anybody else whose husband goes away to a blue collar job and comes home bruised and dirty and often proud of the work that they're doing. ~ Adam Savage

Tugging at his collar to loosen it, he pushed at the half-open door and entered the room.
Miss Hathaway stood near the doorway, waiting with tightly leashed impatience, while Merripen remained a dark presence in the corner. As Cam approached and looked into her upturned face, the panic dissolved in a curious rush of heat. Her blue eyes were smudged with faint lavender shadows, and her soft-looking lips were pressed into a tight seam. Her hair had been pulled back and pinned, dark and shining against her head.
That scraped-back hair, the modest restrictive clothing, advertised her as a woman of inhibitions. A proper spinster. But nothing could have concealed her radiant will. She was ... delicious. He wanted to unwrap her like a long-awaited gift. He wanted her vulnerable and naked beneath him, that soft mouth swollen from hard, deep kisses, her pale body flushed with desire. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I'm a working-class kid from a blue-collar New England family. ~ R.A. Salvatore

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

It's an experience I'd like to add to the chorus, that these blue-collar, macho men, like my older brother, had the capacity to say: 'I don't care, I love you anyway.' There are young kids thinking: 'I'll never come out because it's too hard in our communities.' But I'm saying maybe your story can be similar to mine. ~ Colman Domingo

How much do you have to pay someone to be in a George Clooney/Alexander Payne film? Nothing! Because everyone in the world wants to be a part of it. Therefore you pay nothing. And that continues until you become something they need ... I'm not that kind of actor. I'm blue collar and very replaceable. ~ Matthew Lillard

I come from a blue-collar town - and being from that place, you learn not to let anybody take advantage of you. You don't let people mistreat you. You stand up for what's right. ~ Mo'Nique

My experience growing up in a rough and tumble town in the blue-collar world of Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s was that anything a man did was always more important than anything a woman did. ~ Tawni O'Dell

It was a source of shame for my family that I was in rock and roll, which is so blue-collar. It just isn't done. And I felt it, too. ~ Liz Phair

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time. ~ Norman Foster

I was raised in a very blue-collar family. ~ Jamie Moyer

Now Mitt is not a perfect candidate. He has a number of problems. It's hard for him, for blue collar families like mine to identify with him. It's hard for economic conservatives to identify with him. He needs to do more to reach out to Latinos ... ~ George Pataki

My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French. ~ Lorraine Bracco

Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail. ~ Bobby Adair

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and was raised by a man who did not emote, ever ... I always cry at movies, and when I was a kid, I would try to hide it. It wasn't something a kid in Oaklyn, N.J., did. So I have these weird hang-ups about emotions. ~ Matthew Quick

Dan was shorter than me, especially as I was wearing sky blue silk stilettos. He appeared to be my age or a few years older,stocky, and thick necked with swirling tattoos just visible beneath the blue collar of his uniform.Dan gave me a plain once over as he walked me to an elevator and placed his palm against a glass screen. The screen retracted to reveal keypad. Dan then punched in a series of numbers and he said- "You're very big."I gave him a cursory smile, "Yes. I ate all my vegetables as a child. ~ Penny Reid

We are always in these days endeavoring to separate intellect and manual labor; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense. ~ John Ruskin

I have so much respect for people who do blue-collar work because I come from that background myself. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

I'll tell ya this: I come from an educated family. My father was an attorney representing blue collar workers, and my uncle was a chemical engineer ... on my mom's side, all my uncles were engineers - all ten of them. ~ Joe Piscopo

(From Danielle Raver's short story THE ENCHANTRESS)
Thick chains attached to the wall hold a metal collar and belt, restraining most of the tiger's movements. Open, bloody slashes cover his face and back, but he shows no loss of strength as he pulls on the chains and tries to rip the flesh of the surrounding humans with his deadly claws. Out of his reach, I kneel down before him, and his lightning-blue eyes cross my space for a moment.

"Get her out of there!" I hear from behind me.

"Numnerai," I speak urgently to the tiger. "They will kill you!"

He growls and gnashes his teeth, but I sense he is responding to me.

"Great white tiger, your duty is to protect the prince. But how can you do that if they sink the end of a spear into your heart?" He looks at me for a longer moment. The fighters respond to this by growing still. In their desperation, they are overlooking my foolishness for a chance to save their fellows' lives. I crouch on my feet and begin to nudge closer to him. The tiger growls a warning, but does not slash out at me. "Think of the prince, protector of the palace. Right now he prays for you to live. ~ D.M. Raver

Though there were many auspicious signs that preceded and accompanied Jesus's birth that might have prepared us for something kingly and special, the birth of Jesus was of the humblest peasant parentage in an unimportant town and in the lowest conceivable of buildings, a stable. After his birth he moved from there to a despised portion of the country, Galilee, to an unsavory town, Nazareth. As he grew up, he took a blue-collar job as a carpenter. He achieved a measure of notice as an adult when he was a rabbi with several men and women following him, but even then he went out of his way to reject marks of status by touching lepers, washing the feet of his followers, befriending little children, letting women become prominent in his entourage, and finally being crucified under the most humiliating circumstances.
Everything about Jesus spoke of servitude. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I look in the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely rugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't matter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-blue silk cloak on my shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from my hat, and a big sword, and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing horse, so that I might go about and gladden the eyes of the people. Why should we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Why shouldn't we dress a little gayly? I am sure if we did we should be happier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race, and what is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like. But let me be a butterfly. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

I think a lot of blue collar people related to me because a lot of people work for their money. ~ Larry Bird

I'll always have this blue-collar connection. For every guy, there is an opportunity to be a lot better than he thought he could be. We can't all be the star of the team, but we can be a star in our life. ~ Sylvester Stallone

America needs football. It's a real blue-collar sport; it's played with a blue-collar mentality, a mentality that's the backbone of this country. ~ Troy Polamalu

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce. ~ Tom Peters

I understand a lot of celebrities lose weight because they have the opportunity to get in shape and become healthier, but when you get so polished, you can't tell the story of a blue-collar family anymore. ~ Cristela Alonzo