Working Classes Quotes

Veblen argues that the existing social hierarchy is actively maintained by competitive consumption among all classes of society. Thus, consumerism, far from being something that is inflicted upon the working classes by the scheming bourgeoisi, is something that the working classes actively participate in maintaining - even though it is not in their collective interest to do so. If the working classes had wanted to buy out the capitalists, they could easily have done so by now, simply by saving a fraction of the wage increases that they have received over the years. But instead they have chosen to max out their spending on consumer goods. ~ Joseph Heath

By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes. ~ Joseph Stalin

Violence is the most popular political commodity. Politicians are the wholesalers of violence. Ruling elites are the main beneficiary of violence and working classes are the innocent and silent victims of violence. When politician and corporate forces comes together to promote the gross violence they call that War, uprisings etc. ~ William Gomes

Absinthe, or wormwood, the liquorice-flavoured, plant-based liqueur, had been popular in France throughout the 19th century. Though the drink was of Swiss origin, heavy tax on import had encouraged H.L. Pernod to start producing it commercially in France at the end of the 18th century.12 It was a tremendous success, and as the 19th century unfolded, its popularity soared. Exceedingly potent, it was closer to a soft drug than a drink. 'The drunkenness it gives does not resemble any known drunkenness,' bemoaned Alfred Delvau. 'It makes you lose your footing right away […] You think you are headed towards infinity, like all great dreamers, and you are only headed towards incoherence.'13 In excess, absinthe could have a fatal effect on the nervous system, and by the time Maria started attending the bars and cafés where it was served, it had become a national curse. A favourite drink among the working classes precisely because of its relative cheapness for the effect produced, absinthe became the scapegoat for a host of social ills, not least the Commune.
(...)
Absinthe found a dedicated following among artists, writers and poets (including Charles Baudelaire), for whom the liquor became the entrancing 'green fairy'. Its popularity in these circles was due primarily to its intoxicating effect, but also because its consumption was accompanied by a curious ritual which appealed to quirky individuals with a taste for the extraordinary. To counteract the drink's inherent bit ~ Catherine Hewitt

If you look for the working classes in fiction, and especially English fiction, all you find is a hole. ~ George Orwell

When the Bolsheviks came to power they were soft and easy with their enemies ... we had begun by making a mistake. Leniency towards such a power was a crime against the working classes. That soon became apparent ... ~ Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Ultimately, imperialism made even the British working classes suffer. This is a point which the British working classes found quite difficult to swallow, but they did, actually. ~ Amartya Sen

The middle and working classes are paying the debt that the financial markets created. ~ Javier Bardem

I'm a Conservative, but I talk for the ordinary working classes. I get on with the boys at the pub, but I can also mix with Prince Andrew. I understand both levels. The toffs haven't lived in council estates; they've just known big mansions. How can they understand how the postman feels? I would never say no to becoming an MP. ~ Vinnie Jones

I'm more of a warrior than you'll ever be. I believe in the class war. I believe in the battle of the sexes. I believe in my tribe. I believe in the righteous, intelligent clued-up section of the working classes against the brain-dead moronic masses as well as the mediocre, soulless bourgeoisie. ~ Irvine Welsh

Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Bronte or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to.

[…]any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. ~ Virginia Woolf

The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

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 hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century. ~ Alfred Marshall

All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes. ~ Vladimir Lenin

He became deeply sun-browned, and although the bronze hue of his skin clearly proclaimed him to be of the working classes, it enhanced the vivid blue-green of his eyes and made his teeth look even whiter than usual. Not surprisingly, McKenna began to attract the notice of female guests at the estate, one of whom even attempted to hire him away from Stony Cross Park. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Ive had the best possible chance of learning that what the working-classes really need is to be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs, Doctorto develop their abilities, their understanding and their self-respect. ~ Henrik Ibsen

I love the way people dress at the races. I love people dressed to the nines during the day. That formal kind of daywear doesn't really exist anymore except at the races. Also I love the tuffs and the working classes being so hand in glove and relying on each other to make the thing happen. ~ Bella Freud

One guy yelled at me, 'You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. Ok, 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 classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind of crap 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. Am I right, or what? ~ Haruki Murakami

If Aliosha had come to the conclusion that neither God nor immortality existed, he would immediately have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not only a question of the working classes; it is above all, in its contemporary incarnation, a question of atheism, a question of the tower of Babel, which is constructed without God's help, not to reach to the heavens, but to bring the heavens down to earth. ~ Albert Camus

During the present interval between the feudal age and the coming time, when life and its occupations will be freely thrown open to women as to men, the condition of the female working classes is such that if its sufferings were but made known, emotions of horror and shame would tremble through the whole of society. ~ Harriet Martineau

The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down. ~ Tracey Ullman

I know too much from personal observation from how the poor and working classes live to be satisfied with a system which makes their lives one unceasing round of toil, deprivation and anxiety. ~ Vida Goldstein

The working classes were becoming more and more sharply aware of the complex causes of international malaise. ~ Leon Jouhaux

No born Londoner (it is different with people of Scotch or Irish origin) now says 'bloody,' unless he is a man of some education. The word has, in fact, moved up in the social scale and ceased to be a swear word for the purposes of the working classes. The current London adjective, now tacked on to every noun, is
. No doubt in time
, like 'bloody,' will find its way into the drawing room and replaced by some other word. ~ George Orwell

Ebenezer Howard's vision of the Garden City would seem almost feudal to us. He seems to have thought that members of the industrial working classes would stay neatly in their class, and even at the same job within their class; that agricultural workers would stay in agriculture; that businessmen (the enemy) would hardly exist as a significant force in his Utopia; and that planners could go about their good and lofty work, unhampered by rude nay-saying from the untrained. It was the very fluidity of the new nineteenth-century industrial and metropolitan society, with its profound shiftings of power, people and money, that agitated Howard so deeply ~ Jane Jacobs

If emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal conncurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure? It was not the wisdom of the ruling classes, but the heroic resistance to their criminal folly by the working classes of England, that saved the west of Europe from plunging headlong into an infamous crusade for the propagation of slavery on the other side of the Atlantic. ~ Karl Marx

So you talk about the mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the baron's wars. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground. ~ Henry George

You must drop all your democracy. You must not believe in 'the people.' One class is no better than another. It must be a case of Wisdom, or Truth. Let the working classes be working classes. That is the truth. There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a Ruler: a Kaiser: no Presidents and democracies. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The middle and working classes no longer think of the present society as structured around classes. Current opinion holds that the rich are deserving and the poor are not, while an incalculable number of people linger between the categories. A huge section of public opinion in the Western world tends to regard oppression and exploitation as residual abuses, not inherent features of a specific social order. The prevailing society is neither rationally analyzed nor forcefully challenged; it is prudently psychoanalyzed and politely coaxed, as though social problems emerge from erratic individual behavior. ~ Murray Bookchin

to support this privileged class as long as they kept up their end of the bargain with effective rituals. But after 650, deforestation, erosion, and soil exhaustion began reducing crop yields. The working classes, the farmers and monument builders, may have suffered increasing hunger and disease, even as the rulers hogged an ever-larger share of resources. The society was heading for a crisis. Diamond writes: "We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities." (If this sounds familiar, I would note that archaeology is thick with cautionary tales that speak directly to the twenty-first century.) ~ Douglas Preston

If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists. ~ Thomas Malthus

The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash. I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian Right called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working classes into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian Right who offer a belief in magic, miracles, and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. And unless we rapidly re-enfranchise our dispossessed workers into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed. ~ Chris Hedges

All this display, while the working classes were pinched beyond bearing; it was not wise, or tasteful: it smacked of ostentatious wealth. The Europe from which Phryne had lately come was impoverished, even the nobility; and was keeping its head down, still shocked by the Russian revolution. It had become fashionable to make no display; understatement had become most stylish. ~ Kerry Greenwood

He referred to Aneurin Bevan as 'Urinal' Bevan. As for the working classes, they couldn't write their own names in shit on a lavatory wall. I said I thought they could. ~ Tony Benn

Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost. ~ William Somerset Maugham

At Leeds the idea of an international labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in the existence of international capitalist competition. ~ Leon Jouhaux

I'm addicted to working. I mean, I have a list of 100 countries I want to play in. I'm basically killing myself by travelling so much, for no reason whatsoever. ~ Elton John

To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power. ~ Georges Cuvier

You go through this business and you meet people that you bond with, and you get to go make movies with them. It's wonderful. What I've always dreamt of, in my career, is to have a brotherhood of collaborators, and go in and out of working with them. I'm just starting to get that, and it's really lovely. ~ Charlie Hunnam

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). ~ George Saunders

I think that the real future of the American party is to bring in working Americans. ~ Jeff Sessions

By contrast, a modern person lives surrounded by strangers who are doing things they may not understand. We cannot rely on our instincts and our relationships to keep society working. So it's more important than ever to make sure that we get the rules right. If we want our economy to grow, it means looking for ways to support experimental risk-taking by trading a little more than we may instinctively be comfortable with. It means offering big payoffs to those who are willing to take big risks but also making sure that the unlucky don't starve. In short, it means accepting that a high degree of unpredictability goes with the hunting ground. ~ Megan McArdle

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians,
Tight-rope walkers and acrobats
They had an extensive reputation.
[...]
When the family assembled for Sunday dinner,
With their minds made up that they wouldn't get thinner
On Argentine joint, potatoes and greens,
And the cook would appear from behind the scenes
And say in a voice that was broken with sorrow
"I'm afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow!
For the joint has gone from the oven like that!"
Then the family would say: "It's that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie – or Rumpleteazer!" -
And most of the time they left it at that.

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer had a wonderful way of working together.
And some of the time you would say it was luck
And some of the time you would say it was weather.
They would go through the house like a hurricane,
And no sober person could take his oath
Was it Mungojerrie – or Rumpleteazer?
Or could you have sworn that it mightn't be both?

And when you heard a dining room smash
Or up from the pantry there came a loud crash
Or down from the library came a loud ping
From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming
Then the family would say: "Now which was which cat?
It was Mungojerrie! And Rumpleteazer!"
And there's nothing at all to be done about that! ~ T.S. Eliot

One night, as I cooked dinner in our home on the zoo grounds, I brooded over my troubles. I didn't want to spend the evening feeling sorry for myself, so I thought about Steve out in the back, fire-gazing. He was a very lucky man, because for Steve, fire-gazing literally meant getting to build a roaring fire and sitting beside it, to contemplate life.
Suddenly I heard him come thundering up the front stairs. He burst wild-eyed into the kitchen. He's been nailed by a snake, I thought immediately. I didn't know what was going on.
"I know what we have to do!" he said, extremely excited.
He pulled me into the living room, sat me down, and took my hands in his. Looking intensely into my eyes, he said, "Babe, we've got to have children."
Wow, I thought, that must have been some fire.
"Ok-aaay," I said.
"You don't understand, you don't understand!" he said, trying to catch me up to his thoughts. "Everything we've been working for, the zoo that we've been building up, all of our efforts to protect wildlife, it will all stop with us!"
As with every good idea that came into his head, Steve wanted to act on it immediately. Just take it in stride, I said to myself. But he was so sincere. We'd talked about having children before, but for some reason it hit him that the time was now.
"We have got to have children," he said. "I know that if we have kids, they will carry on when we're gone."
"Great," I said. "Let's get right on that."
Steve k ~ Terri Irwin

Finally, Groucho stopped working on his roast beef, put down his fork, leaned over to her and said, "Look, will you stop calling him 'Gumbo'? Gumbo's a type of soup. My brother's name is 'Gummo!'" In ~ Steve Stoliar

In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe. ~ Karl Marx

I have two hammocks, one Mayan and one Guatemalan, both family size because I like to lie in them perpendicular. When I'm working on a character, I lie in them and daydream. They're the best tools for working that I have. ~ Mark Ruffalo

If I want to keep working as an actor, I'm going to become a comedian who does fart jokes. ~ Peter Sarsgaard

Working with Tim Burton is like a psychic experience -Tim waves his hands and says, 'I don't know,' and you go home and do it. He's the most articulate nonverbal person in the world. He doesn't say a word, and you know exactly what it means. ~ Caroline Thompson

Most of my writing friends are working in academia. Most of my business school friends are always talking about bringing companies public, and money, and making money, and lots and lots of money. It's just a different environment. ~ Victoria Chang

We set up our gear for the tune-up and Tony [Iommi] launched into the opening riff of 'Black Sabbath' – doh, doh, doooohnnnn – but before I'd got through the first line of lyrics the manager had run on to the stage, red in the face, and was shouting, 'STOP, STOP, STOP! Are you f**king serious? This isn't Top-Forty pop covers! Who are you people?'
'Earth,' said Tony, shrugging. 'You booked us, remember?'
'I didn't book this. I thought you were going to play "Mellow Yellow" and "California Dream-in'".'
'Who – us?' laughed Tony.
'That's what your manager told me!'
'Jim Simpson told you that?'
'Who the hell's Jim Simpson?'
'Ah,' said Tony, finally working out what had happened. He turned to us and said, 'Lads, I think we might not be the only band called Earth.'

He was right: there was another Earth on the C-list gig circuit. But they didn't play satanic music. They played pop and Motown covers. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Interference by the three classes with each other s jobs, and interchange of jobs between them, therefore, does the greatest harm to our state, and we are entirely justified in calling it the worst of evils. ~ Plato

Was a hardcore homeschooler, K-12, baby. I was homeschooled before it was cool to be homeschooled. And you know what? I hardly remember anything from high school. I did all the Advanced Placement classes and SAT prep classes. I was a good student in high school, but I don't remember much. I also hardly remember anything from college, and I graduated at the top of my class. But I do remember my parents' devotion to the Lord. ~ Stephen Altrogge

I find it rather tedious working with some actors who have to go into a corner and bounce up and down, shake their hands and arms, saying to the director, "Just a second - I'll be ready in a few minutes, " while all the other actors are waiting around to get in. Then they say, "OK! I'm ready now." And then they come on and do it exactly the same way they've done it in rehearsal. ~ Elizabeth Taylor

To be honest, unless you rocket straight to stardom as a gorgeous young vampire, you can spend a lot of time working behind a bar. ~ Adam Rayner

There are two kinds of science: The black science and the white science. The science of weapon production is the black one. Working in this category of science is a great betrayal to humanity! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We have snacks, everybody!"
"Where'd you get them from, Delaware?" Ben asked. He was glaring behind me, where Sage leaned casually against the wall.
"Practically," I said. "My fault-I was dying for Red Hots. Pretty much impossible to find. So what movie are we watching?"
Back in the cave, Sage had told me I wasn't much of an actress, and apparently he was right. I thought I put on a brilliant show, but Ben's eyes were filled with suspicion, Rayna looked like she was ready to pounce, and Sage seemed to be working very hard to stifle his laughter.
Rayna yawned. "Can't do it. I'm so tired. I'm sorry, but I have to kick you guys out and get some sleep."
She wasn't much better at acting than I was. I knew she wanted to talk, but the idea of being away from Sage killed me.
"No worries," I said. "I can bring he snacks to the guys' room. We can watch there and let you sleep."
"Great!" Ben said.
Rayna gaped, and in the space of ten seconds, she and I had a full conversation with only our eyes.
Rayna: "What the hell?"
Me: "I know! But I want to hang out with Sage."
Rayna: "Are you insane?! You'll be with him for the rest of your life. I'm only with you until morning!"
I couldn't fight that one. She was right.
"Actually, I'm pretty tired too," I said. I even forced a yawn, though judging from Sage's smirk, it wasn't terribly convincing.
"You sure?" Ben asked. He was staring at me in a way that made me feel X-rayed.
Hilary Duff

do we have a bunch of fucktards working for us?" "Both, ~ R.B. Hilliard

For the longest time my company is what got me up in the morning. It was what motivated me every second of every day. Since the moment you started working for me, you are what has gotten me up in the morning. You are what motivates me every second of every day. And still I want more from you. Tomorrow the day is all ours, because I want to talk to you about something. ~ Samantha Young

I was desperate."
"That wasn't the entire reason." His low voice sounded like a purr. "You also had a taste for the devil."
"I didn't! I don't!"
"You enjoyed cornering me, an infamous rake, in my own home with an offer I couldn't afford to refuse. Don't try to deny it - I know you well enough by now."
Incredibly, despite her grief and worry, Evie felt a smile working up to her lips. "Perhaps I did enjoy it, for a moment," she admitted. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working. One is tempted to stop and listen to it. The only thing is to turn away and go on working. Work. There is nothing else. ~ Albert Einstein

A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well. ~ Ed Catmull

I could see myself in a white nurse's uniform, working unnoticed for many years and at last dying, unknown, unmarried and unsung. ~ Kate Smith

I don't really do New Year's resolutions because I don't think you should have to wait until December to start working on how to change yourself. I think if you've got a problem, you need to fix it now. ~ Clay Aiken

Your cells are not working as hard as your dog's but harder than your horse's. The bigger the animal, the less energy needed to sustain a gram of tissue. ~ Geoffrey West

Jeff Klein, one of the earliest champions of Conscious Capitalism, offers a highly practical yet profoundly intuitive blueprint for achieving your purpose-and making a difference at work. You will return to Working for Good again and again. It belongs on your desk and in your heart. ~ Patricia Aburdene

If you're building a startup or any sort of organization, take a few moments to reflect on the qualities that the people you most enjoy working with embody and the user experience of new people joining your organization, from the offer letter to their first day. ~ Matt Mullenweg

That's the beauty of a garden," she said. "Some stuff works, some stuff doesn't, and some stuff you think isn't working ends up producing the following year. Keeps you living in a constant state of suspense, so whatever comes, you're grateful for it. ~ Loretta Nyhan

Writing a book is about me doing the work to get from the obsessive particular to something that reaches out of that in some meaningful way. It doesn't come easy to me. I really admire people who do it with acuity, but I don't, and for me it takes the process of working on a book for years to do any thinking that I feel accomplishes anything. I don't do it off the cuff well. ~ Lucy Corin

Working with Barneys, and choosing the looks, I was thinking about whether a real woman would buy this outfit and feel beautiful and comfortable. ~ Carine Roitfeld

I have a very distinct goal all the time that I'm working toward, and I love the way it makes me live. ~ Tommy Caldwell