Class Privilege Quotes

Clementine learned to feel bad about her white middle-class privilege long before it became fashionable. ~ Liane Moriarty

Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin, which have passed into the body of science... The defense generally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable. This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gita. ~ Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi

The idea of "common oppression" was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women's varied and complex social reality. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices. Sustained woman bonding can occur only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them. ~ Bell Hooks

Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges. ~ George Orwell

Initially, class privilege was not discussed by white women in the women's movement. They wanted to project an image of themselves as victims and that could not be done by drawing attention to their class. In fact, the contemporary women's movement was extremely class bound. As a group, white participants did not denounce capitalism. They chose to define liberation using the terms of white capitalist patriarchy, equating liberation with gaining economic status and money power. Like all good capitalists, they proclaimed work as the key to liberation. This emphasis on work was yet another indication of the extent to which the white female liberationists' perception of reality was totally narcissistic, classist, and racist. Implicit in the assertion that work was the key to women's liberation was a refusal to acknowledge the reality that, for masses of American working class women, working for pay neither liberated them from sexist oppression nor allowed them to gain any measure of economic independence. ~ Bell Hooks

The older kind of Socialist, who had been trained to fight against something called 'class privilege', assumed that what is not hereditary cannot be permanent. He did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been shortlived, whereas adoptive organisations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ~ George Orwell

We're all self-destructive when we're young. We all rebel. If we don't, there's something wrong. But when a Chicano kid's in a rebellious state, he has nowhere to go but to put himself in jeopardy with the police. When a kid who has some class privilege rebels, he's in a beautiful room and he can buy these horrible CDs and drugs. He's buffered from being a criminal. ~ Jimmy Santiago Baca

He fate of the poor both locally and globally will to a grave extent determine the quality of life for those who are lucky enough to have class privilege. Repudiating exploitation by word and deed is a gesture of solidarity with the poor. ~ Bell Hooks

I have never experienced racism in the feminist movement, so it concerned me to think that I was unable to see the subject clearly because I came from white, middle-class privilege. ~ Betty Buckley

The middle class and upper middle class are highly attached to the institution of school explicitly as a sorting mechanism, as a way of justifying privileges of which middle-class members are already central beneficiaries. These critics suggest that the entire notion of schools as meritocracies actually reifies and reinforces class privilege--making those whom school rewards (those who already have a lot of benefits) feel they deserve the privileges they have. ~ Kirsten Olson

Nixon finding areas of agreement with his Democratic adviser, as when Pat writes to him, "I do not know, but strongly suspect, that especially to working-class America, the misbehavior of [college] students is seen as a form of class privilege. Which it is. ~ Stephen Hess

Testimony in new age writing affirms the way in which embracing a love ethic transforms life for the good. Yet a lot of this information only reaches those of us who have class privilege. And often, individuals whose lives are rich in spiritual and material well-being, who have diverse friends from all walks of life who nurture their personal integrity, tell the rest of the world these things are impossible to come by. I am talking here about the many prophets of doom who tell us that racism will never end, sexism is here to stay the rich will never share their resources. We would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for a day. Much of what they are telling us cannot be had, they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can only be had by a few. ~ Bell Hooks

I could always see myself being a teacher. I remember sitting in class as a kid, listening to the teacher and thinking, you know, I'm pretty sure I could explain that a little bit better. ~ Rick Riordan

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class. ~ Thomas Sowell

Officers in the Church of Jesus Christ are called for two distinct purposes: First and foremost, to serve the people; and, secondly, to gain the development and enlarged understanding which always follow earnest service in a responsible position. It is an honorable privilege and a personal benefit to be allowed to serve in an official position in the Church; and an office, whatever it may be, should be accepted in a spirit of grateful appreciation. ~ John Andreas Widtsoe

She emoted more by blinking than I did in the entirety of my sixth-grade class play ~ Adam Cadre

The real enemy is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists. ~ Bob Black

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women. ~ Sally Ride

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade"

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions
on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather's

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else -

something important - and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something. ~ Brad Aaron Modlin

When I say he's not rude, what I really mean is he's male and moneyed and got to that age where we allow him his chosen degree of rude as some sort of social entitlement, along with his bus pass. ~ Mhairi McFarlane

Somebody with a PhD in electricity will spend the night in the dark but a class 8 drop-out will fix it ~ Dida Mohamed

Hey, baby," Chelsea said in a voice that bordered on baby talk as Mike bent down to give her a quick kiss. "Miss me?"
Violet almost rolled her eyes.
"I thought about you all period," he answered, his voice husky. "Did you get the note I left in your backpack?"
Violet couldn't hold back any longer; she rolled her eyes. Neither of them noticed.
"I did. You're so sweet." The cooing verged on sickening. "Did anyone say anything about your mustache?"
Mike winced, as if he suddenly remembered the patchy hair on his upper lip. "A coupla' people," he reluctantly responded, and Violet suspected that he'd taken his hair share of ribbing over it.
Chelsea ignored the obvious distress in his voice. "Vi and I gotta run or we'll be late." She stretched up to kiss him and then rubbed her thumb across the hairs above his lip as if she were petting them. "See you after class."
Chelsea tugged at Violet, who was still staring at his unsightly mustache. It was like seeing a car accident…hard to look away.
"So do you? Like it, I mean?" Violet asked as she was being dragged down the hallway.
"The mustache?" Chelsea grimaced. "God, no. It's hideous on him."
"Then, why?"
"I told you, to see if he'd actually do it. Don't worry. I'm gonna make him shave it this weekend."
Violet wasn't sure whether to congratulate her friend on her training abilities or reprimand her for being so cruel. In the end, she didn't do either, mostly because she knew ~ Kimberly Derting

To oppose one class perpetually to another - young against old, manual labor against brain-worker, rich against poor, woman against man - is to split the foundations of the State; and if the cleavage runs too deep, there remains no remedy but force and dictatorship. If you wish to preserve a free democracy, you must base it - not on classes and categories, for this will land you in the totalitarian State, where no one may act or think except as the member of a category. You must base it upon the individual Tom, Dick and Harry, and the individual Jack and Jill - in fact, upon you and me. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class. ~ Paul Tonko

In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals. Nobody walks into an operating room straight out of a surgical rotation and does world-class neurosurgery. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up - Ho-HO! Now you've got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You're not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I'm talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it. ~ Libba Bray

We were very - we were a working family, and my father had this very simple philosophy, simple working class approach. If you spoke to my father and said, "Mr Smith across the road, what do you think of Mr Smith?", he'd only - he'd only say a couple of words. He'd say, "He's a worker", and that meant this bloke got up in the morning, went out, worked, brought his money home, fed his wife and kids, housed them, got them to school, educated them, made sure they were safe and all that. It had so much connotations to it. ~ Warren Mundine

Far too few have much too much, and way too many have much too little! ~ Gerald Celente

He got to know me, not with the minuteness with which I knew him, but with his spontaneous conclusions. He talked about everyone and defined them, but I had the privilege of being the only one in whom he discovered new facets, the only one to whom he addressed questions from the soul, the only one he examined and in whom he found what they never gave him, but he was frightened by the discovery. The two of us were filled with fear that night, the only night, when we again closed what we'd opened, as if we'd never seen it. ~ Jorge Franco

Growing up with Tumblr, I can imagine if I was fourteen now being in high school and being on Tumblr all the time in class - that must be such an annoying thing for teachers to have to deal with! ~ Lizzy Plapinger

Jasper was clearly impressed. "Katie," he said, "I didn't realize you knew so much about dinosaurs."
"Yeah," said Katie resentfully. "I had to redo a class project on them when I was in fifth grade. They asked us to make a model of a dinosaur, so I made one by covering one of my old Star-Wonder Glitter Ponies with clay. You know, I gave him wings and stuff. The teacher didn't like it because he said there wasn't a real dinosaur that had wings and four legs. And a pink-and-blue sparkly mane. He gave me a D-minus and said it was a sad day for paleontology. ~ M T Anderson

This upper class is disgusting and I'm furious at all these rich people here, having seen thousands of people in abject squalor. ~ Frida Kahlo

One who loves honey does not have the privilege of hating bees. One who adores roses does not have the privilege of loathing thorns. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Our society buries most of those that contribute above their station. It disbelieves them, labelling them whatever nickname will soil their reputation the most at the time. That's the standard protocol for political and economic warfare. ~ Anita B. Sulser PhD

Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. ~ Will Self

Being as I am both a woman and working-class, choice don't come into it, much, for me. I do what I must." Charles/Karl wanted to say he was sorry, and couldn't.
"I imagine you don't talk to many of us, as against studying us in bulk. The dangerous masses. To be put in camps, and set to work on projects."
"You are being unfair," said Charles/Karl. "You are mocking me."
"We can do that, at least, if we dare."
"Miss Warren," said Charles/Karl, "I wish you would not talk as though you were a group, or a class, or a committee. I should like to be talking to you as a person."
"Can you?"
"Why should I not?"
"For every reason. I am both working-class and not respectable. I am a Fallen Woman. I have a daughter. You don't want to be talking to me as if I were a person, Mr. Wellwood. ~ A.S. Byatt

It is no longer simply the merchant prince, or the aristocratic monopoly, or even the employing class, that is exploiting the world: it is the nation, a new democratic nation composed of united capital and labor. ~ Howard Zinn

He who is faithful over a few things is a lord of cities. It does not matter whether you preach in Westminster Abbey or teach a ragged class, so you be faithful. The faithfulness is all. ~ George MacDonald

His name was Ed. His nickname was Scrambled Ed. On leaving school he had taken a year out to decide what he wanted to study at University. The year passed and he still hadn't decided but went to University anyway.

'Academic' is defined as 'of, or relating to, institutionalized education and scholarship'. The same word, at the same time, also means 'having little practical use or value, as by being overly detailed, unengaging or theoretical'.
The latter definition seemed the most appropriate for Ed's university career which was a mash up of drinking, diving, surfing, kayaking and having his heart-broken. All washed down with a few pints.
After three years of that he was awarded a second class joint honours degree which he put in the recycling bin and went in search of something that would make him feel better. ~ Matt Padwick

Status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth. ~ Mohsin Hamid

The UCLA coup represents the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics. Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin. ~ Heather MacDonald

Had we a privilege of calling up by the power of memory only such passages as were pleasing, unmixed with such as were disagreeable, we might then excite at pleasure an ideal happiness, perhaps more poignant than actual sensation. ~ Henry Theodore Tuckerman

I am prepared to sacrifice every so-called privilege I possess in order to have a few rights. ~ Inez Milholland

On the outside it doesn't look like very much happened. A burned girl was in my class for a while. Once I brought her some homework. In class she said my name. Then she was gone. That's pretty much all that happened. ~ Tony Abbott

As it happened, the guy who was the honor man or best in our class was part of our platoon. He never had as many kills as I did, though, at least partly because he was sent to the Philippines for a few months while I spent my time in Iraq. You need skill to be a sniper, but you also need opportunity. And luck. ~ Chris Kyle

One of my all-time favorite pranks was gaining unauthorized access to the telephone switch and changing the class of service of a fellow phone phreak. When he'd attempt to make a call from home, he'd get a message telling him to deposit a dime, because the telephone company switch received input that indicated he was calling from a pay phone. ~ Kevin Mitnick

All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men. ~ Sam Houston

How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scares by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices. ~ Howard Zinn

At the heart of it all, Passion exists to see a generation stake their lives on what matters most. For us, that's the fame of the One who rescues and restores, and the privilege we have to fully leverage our lives by amplifying His name in everything we do. ~ Louie Giglio

And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together - year after year - for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable' - is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner - or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom - or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room - waiting to be discovered! ~ Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

He differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle class - he never seemed to perspire. Some people couldn't be familiar with a chauffeur without having it returned; ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

A teacher in class is
like a man in the woods at night with a powerful flashlight in his hand.
Wherever he turns his light, the creatures on whom it shines are aware of it,
and do not behave as they do in the dark. Thus the mere fact of his watching
their behavior changes it into something very different. Shine where be will,
he can never know very much of the night life of the woods. ~ John Holt

There are only two kinds of class: First class and no class. ~ David O. Selznick