Working Class America Quotes

Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial theater of the free market economy does not make for optimism or open mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink. ~ Joe Bageant

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

He was thinking that the cities, perhaps, needed to look into the future even more than the country did. They should look ahead for forty, eighty, one hundred and sixty years, to a strong and healthy plain of population - or to an overworked, weakened, underfed, and infertile desert. ~ Jim Thompson

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life. ~ Richard Russo

Are you sure you don't remember? Your mind seems to be working just fine to me."
"You know what? Just forget it. Whatever it was, I forgive you. Give me my backpack so I can go back to the office. We're about to get busted anyway, just standing here."
"If you really do forgive me, then you wouldn't still be going to the office." He tightens his hold on the strap of my backpack.
"Ohmysweetgoodness, Galen, why are we even having this conversation? You don't even know me. What do you care if I change my schedule?" I know I'm being rude. The guy offered to carry my things and walk me to class. And depending on which version of the story I believe, he either asked me out on Monday already, or he did it indirectly a few seconds ago. None of it makes any sense. Why me? Without any effort, I can think of at least ten girls who beat me out in looks, personality, and darker foundation. And Galen could pull any of them.
"What, you don't have a question for my question?" I ask after a few seconds.
"It just seems silly for you to change your schedule over a disagreement about when the Titanic-"
I throw my hands up at him. "Don't you see how weird this is for me?"
"I'm trying to, Emma. I really am. But I think you've had a tough couple of weeks, and it's taking a toll on you. You said every time you're around me something bad happens. But you can't really know for sure that's true, unless you spend more time with me. You should at least acknowledge that." ~ Anna Banks

When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you've got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon when necessary.

That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt – unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey.

Fortunately for us we have just the man. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Whereas the property-owning middle class could win freedom for themselves on the basis of rights to property
thus excluding others from the freedom they gain
the property-less working class possess nothing but their title as human beings. Thus they can liberate themselves only by liberating all humanity. ~ Peter Singer

Coming from a working-class background, where my father did manual labor, was a good grounding; I was obsessed with getting a job or getting out of the house at 15. ~ Johnny Marr

Sometimes I'll watch a movie, and it's got some big star in it playing a working-class person, and the character is in a grocery store, and you can kind of tell, from just watching the scene, that this actor doesn't do their own shopping. So you have to have some sense of reality. ~ Winona Ryder

Cognitive rigidities may also prevent social groups from mobilizing in their own self-interest. In the United States, many working-class voters support candidates promising to lower taxes on the wealthy, despite the fact that this hurts their own economic situations. They do so in the belief that such policies will spur economic growth that will eventually trickle down to them, or else make government deficits self-financing. The theory has proved remarkably tenacious in the face of considerable evidence that it is not true. ~ Francis Fukuyama

In all of my books, I really want to work with working-class people. My goal is to show the moments of grace and dignity in their lives. ~ Matt De La Pena

The managers and superintendents and clerks of Packingtown were all recruited from another class, and never from the workers; they scorned the workers, the very meanest of them. A poor devil of a bookkeeper who had been working in Durham's for twenty years at a salary of six dollars a week, and might work there for twenty more and do no better, would yet consider himself a gentleman, as far removed as the poles from the most skilled worker on the killing beds; he would dress differently, and live in another part of the town, and come to work at a different hour of the day, and in every way make sure that he never rubbed elbows with a laboring man. Perhaps this was due to the repulsiveness of the work; at any rate, the people who worked with their hands were a class apart, and were made to feel it. ~ Upton Sinclair

O.K., so I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working class that gets exploited. What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class people can't understand? What the hell kind of social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions. ~ Haruki Murakami

I am extremely excited to develop and design a brand representative of my life, experiences and style. Working closely with Cherokee will help establish a worldwide presence with best-in-class retailers and category leaders. ~ Alessandra Ambrosio

My dad died in 9/11. They opened up the museum to families today, so I went this morning. My plan was to go to work after, but I just couldn't do it.""What happened to him?""He was a cop. He actually had the day off. But as soon as he heard, he drove into the city and got there just in time for the second tower to fall. A witness said that my dad had started to run when the tower fell, but turned back because a trapped woman was calling to him.""What do you remember?""I was in science class. And my teacher told us that there had been a plane crash. That's all she said. Then I noticed all these kids around me getting phone calls and text messages, and they'd run out of class. So I knew something big was happening. Soon we got let out of school. On the ride home, I remember thinking that my dad was going to be working overtime on this. I imagined he'd be down there everyday, saving people. 'I bet I won't see him for weeks,' I said. ~ Brandon Stanton

The greatest historical events in the twentieth century - in fact, in all of human history - have been the overthrow of capitalism and establishment of societies run by and for the working class in the two great communist revolutions in Russia and China. ~ Grover Furr

It was in 1931 that the historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "the American dream."
The American dream is not just a yearning for affluence, Adams said, but also for the chance to overcome barriers and social class, to become the best that we can be. Adams acknowledged that the United States didn't fully live up to that ideal, but he argued that America came closer than anywhere else. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

The Democratic Party has lost much of it credibility with working class and low-income people. It retards progress toward presenting a genuine alternative. ~ Paul Wellstone

There are two kinds of second class men in business. There is the man who puts money first and service second. There is the man who puts service first and money second, who never has any money. The first class man in business is the man who is made up out of rolling the other two kinds into one man and working them together. ~ Gerald Stanley Lee

But those misgivings come less from the resulting loss of familial memories than because it gave Lorelai the working-class skills to escape inherited class obligations and to make her own way in the world. That's one reason why Lorelai is powerful and fearless in ways Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Gilmore are not. She's self-confident enough to accept those things she can't control and to rely upon the kindness of strangers. ~ Jennifer Crusie

When I was successful, but accused of arrogance, I wanted to drag every journalist who misunderstood to this place, and make them see that for a woman, a working-class woman, to want to be a writer, to want to be a good writer, and to believe that you were good enough, that was not arrogance; that was politics. (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? p. 103) ~ Jeanette Winterson

To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workman. Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised;
even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the
face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said
'Sen~or' or 'Don' ort even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos
dias'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture
from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the
trams and taxis and much of the other t ~ George Orwell

Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a "shared manhood" (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of "shared womanhood"). Trans men don't all transition to just become "men," which was one of the projects' cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses.

One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts."

- from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez ~ Mitch Kellaway

The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them. ~ Mark Ruffalo

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the civil war to defend slavery. And its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery they argued Ad nauseam was the foundation for a virtuous biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states. When 19th century deep southerners spoke of defending their "traditions", "heritage", and way of life they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the center piece of all three. Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower class people should be enslaved regardless of race for their own good.
In response to Yankee and midland abolitionist the Deep South's leaders developed an elaborate defense for human bondage. James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers where happier, fitter and better looked after than their free counter parts in Brittan and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists. Free societies were therefore unstable as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up creating a fearful crisis in republican institutions. Salves by contrast were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist or testify, ensuring the foundation of every well designed and durable republic.
Enslavement of the white working class would be in his words a most glorious act of emancipation. Jefferson's notion all men are created equal, he wrote, was ridiculousl ~ Colin Woodard

If you do not learn English in this country, you cannot get anywhere. We are in America. We are not in Mexico, we are not in China, we are not in Saudi Arabia - we speak English in this country! And what bilingual education does, is keep them from learning English, so they are doomed to be second-class citizens. ~ Rafael Cruz

I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It's not what we do here in America. I don't think there's anything called 'middle class values' that are different from the values of other people in this country. ~ Jon Kyl

But since Catt was more realist than fabulist, she understood her actual death at the hands of her killer would be something much slower. It would be a classical feminine death, like a marriage…Raised by meek working-class parents, she despised petty groveling and had no talent for making shit up. She wanted to be a "real" intellectual moving with dizzying freedom between high and low points in the culture. And to a certain extent, she'd succeeded. Catt's semi-name attracted a following among Asberger's boys, girls who'd been hospitalized for mental illness, sex workers, Ivy alumnae on meth, and always, the cutters. With her small self-made fortune, Catt saw herself as Moll Flanders, out-sourcing her visiting professorships and writing commissions to younger artists whose work she believed in. But she'd reached a point lately where the same young people she'd helped were blogging against her, exposing the 'cottage industry' she ran out of her Los Angeles compound facing the Hollywood sign … the same compound these bloggers had lived in rent-free after arriving from Iowa City, Alberta, New Zealand. Loathing all institutions, Catt had become one herself. Even her dentist asked her for money. ~ Chris Kraus

The bottom line is the driver was twenty to twenty-five years older than the robbery suspect. Both husband and wife were college- educated, middle-class American citizens, like you and me."
"Except that they were black, and we are not," Jennifer states the obvious. ~ Mark M. Bello

The mode of reconciling the promise of ever-increasing reward for the cadres and the demands of the working classes for a quid pro quo for their loyalty to the state was to offer the latter a small piece of the pie. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

The average prison term for a convicted murderer in America is 6.5 years. The average tenure for a member of Congress is 13 years. We've got it backwards. We are giving early release to the wrong criminal class. ~ Pat Robertson

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief.

In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?

But Mao's theory might just be the extension o ~ Jung Chang

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex. ~ Karl Marx

If you want to pass this class, and if you want to be a lawyer, working for it isn't enough. You'll need to bleed for it. ~ J.J. McAvoy

I grew up in a working class neighborhood in Sweden, which, during my teens, gentrified and is now completely middle class and even upper middle class. ~ Joel Kinnaman

I don't like to play the macho card, but I grew up in a working-class family and a working-class culture. ~ Tom Brokaw

Aline and I have travelled a very long, very hard road together, from our working class homes in rural Quebec to the palaces of London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. Politics was the route, public service the reward. ~ Jean Chretien

From education to broadband, from building roads and bridges to supporting the military, Barack Obama is delivering for North Carolina. And he is delivering for America. A growing middle class is the foundation for a strong America. ~ Bev Perdue

[Mark] Twain called Congress "the only distinctly native criminal class in America. We've lately sent a United States Senator to the penitentiary." That was a fact. ~ Hal Holbrook