Quotes & Sayings About Classes Of Society

Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society. — Thomas Jefferson

In my brief sojourn in college, my favorite classes were political science because I loved the idea of systems we can set up that benefit society - rules we can put in place that sometimes you run against, sometimes they're painful, but ultimately they benefit the world. — Matt Mullenweg

The conventional way of understanding taste, according to Distinction, is to view it as a capacity for aesthetic judgments in areas such as music, art, and literature. Though rarely made explicit, it is well understood that taste can be found only among the elite, and that the lower classes lack it. Bourdieu argues that it is imperative to break with this concept of taste and replace it with one that is sociological in nature. In order to do so, Bourdieu expands the concept of taste from including only "aesthetic consumption" to including "ordinary consumption," that is, the consumption of clothing, furniture, and food ([1979] 1986:100). He also extends the concept of taste to all social classes, and shows that what constitutes "good taste" is very much part of the struggle for domination in society. — Richard Swedberg

With regard to the learned professions, little need be observed; they truly form no distinct interest in society ... [discussing the landed, merchant, and learned classes in legislative assembly]. Will not the man of the learned profession, who will feel a neutrality to the rivalships between the different branches of industry, be likely to prove an impartial arbiter between them, ready to promote either, so far as it shall appear to him conducive to the general interests of society? — Alexander Hamilton

It's a fact ... that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market' ... Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. — Michel Houellebecq

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat. — Karl Marx

What I did that was new was to prove that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and that dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. — Karl Marx

The trains [in a country] contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Ceylonese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar with its gadgets and passengers represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character. At times it was like a leisurely seminar, but I also felt on some occasions that it was like being jailed and then assaulted by the monstrously typical. — Paul Theroux

Redistribution divided society into two social classes: the beneficiaries of transfer, who are calling for ever more; and the victims, who submit unwillingly. It could hardly fail to injure social peace and harmony. — Hans F. Sennholz

The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them. — John Dewey

Above all, we should bear in mind that our liberty is not an end in itself; it is a means to win respect for human dignity for all classes of our society. — Hyman Rickover

[T]he most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. — James Madison

It is impossible to determine precisely how many Victorians were dependent on the drug, but since millions used it on a daily basis, the number must have been considerable. The pallor of many women in the middle and upper classes, their frequent lack of appetite, their tendency to faint and to spend considerable time alone in dark rooms, the ornate patterns of overupholstered and overfurnished rooms, the persistently closed, thick draperies - these are evidence of a national dependency that the restraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from discussing. — David Morrell

With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Even the head of the military power of a civilized State
must envy the head of the clan whom patriarchal society surrounded with voluntary respect, not with
respect imposed by the club." Moreover, Engels has firmly established that the concept of the State and
the concept of a free society are irreconcilable. "Classes will disappear as ineluctably as they appeared.
With the disappearance of classes, the State will inevitably disappear. The society that reorganizes
production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers will
relegate the machine of State to the place it deserves: to the museum of antiquities, side by side with the spinningwheel
and the bronze ax. — Albert Camus

The government should cultivate the view also among the propertyless classes of the population, those who are the most numerous and the least educated, that the state is not only an institution of necessity but also of welfare. By recognizable and direct advantages they must be led to look upon the state not as an agency devised solely for the protection of the better-situated classes of society but also as one serving their needs and interests. — Otto Von Bismarck

Last evening attended Croghan Lodge International Order of Odd Fellows. Election of officers. Chosen Noble Grand. These social organizations have a number of good results. All who attend are educated in self-government. This in a marked way. They bind society together. The well-to-do and the poor should be brought together as much as possible. The separation into classes
castes
is our danger. It is the danger of all civilizations. — Rutherford B. Hayes

As long as the incomes of the various classes of contemporary society remain beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, there can be no hope of producing a useful economic and social history. — Thomas Piketty

It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products. — Thomas Malthus

Idealistic? Ruddy stupid, if you'll pardon the language, miss,: Mr Roberts said. "All this talk about power for the people and down with the ruling classes and everyone should govern themselves. It can never happen, I told him. The ruling classes are born to rule. They know how to do it. You take a person like you or me and you put us up there to run a country and we'd make a ruddy mess of it. — Rhys Bowen

The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander. — Oscar Wilde

Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element. — George Bernard Shaw

A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects - although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused, and subject to manipulation by other classes. — Harry Braverman

A Society that gives to one class all the opportunities for leisure and to another all the burdens of work condemns both classes to spiritual sterility. — Lewis Mumford

By the end of the eighteenth century it had become clear that none of the estates or classes in the various countries was willing or able to become the new ruling class, that is to identify itself with the government as the nobility had done for centuries.8 The failure of the absolute monarchy to find a substitute within society led to the full development of the nation-state and its claim to be above all classes, completely independent of society and its particular interests, the true and only representative of the nation as a whole. — Hannah Arendt

In 1951, the Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills published a study titled White Collar: The American Middle Classes.26 Like Ronald Coase, Mills was fascinated by the rise of large managerial corporations. He argued that these firms, in their pursuit of scale and efficiency, had created a vast tier of workers who carried out repetitive, mechanistic tasks that stifled their imagination and, ultimately, their ability to fully participate in society. In short, Mills argued, the typical corporate worker was alienated. For many, that alienation was captured in the warning printed on the Hollerith punch cards that, thanks to IBM and other data processing firms, became ubiquitous symbols and agents of bureaucratized life during the 1950s and 1960s: "Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate. — Moises Naim

And when there are no more classes, when society is socially democratized and unified, then there will be revealed in all its metaphysical depths the never-ending tragedy of the conflict between personality and society. — Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Beware of artists, they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous. — Queen Victoria

It will always be considered a praiseworthy undertaking to urge the most obstinate and incredulous to abide by the principles that impel men to live in society. There are, therefore, three distinct classes of vice and virtue: the religious, the natural, and the political. These three classes should never be in contradiction with one another. — Cesare Beccaria

Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society. — Alexis De Tocqueville

This myth of meritocracy and equal opportunities encourages individualism over collective action, because when people believe this myth, they obviously see no need for protest movements around particular classes or identities, such as the Women's Movement or the Civil Rights workplace, education or in their personal lives, they are more likely to blame themselves, rather than sexism, racism, class oppression or homophobia; concepts which in current society are often seen as out of date. This type of blame even applies to experiences of actual violence or harassment with too many people believing that it is their fault if they are sexually harassed in the workplace or at school, abused by a partner or are a victim of sexual violence. Our society encourages this view, and in turn, that keeps people isolated and alone, rather than providing them the opportunity to get involved in collective struggles against such common experiences. — Finn Mackay

In the room of holding out an example for imitation, [the nobility] give only a warning to the lower classes of the people, who are taught to despise the boasted pre-eminence of birth, when attached to the meanest actions and most unwarrantable pursuits; and from hence proceeds all the licentiousness and spirit of equality that causes general disturbance. — Eliza Parsons

A silent, unavoidable revolution is taking place in society, a revolution THAT CARES AS LITTLE ABOUT THE HUMAN LIVES IT DESTROYS as an earthquake cares about the houses it ravages. Classes and RACES THAT ARE TOO WEAK to dominate the new conditions of existence WILL BE DEFEATED. — Karl Marx

I do not deny that there may be other well-founded causes for the hatred which various classes feel toward politicians, but the main one seems to me that politicians are symbols of the fact that every class must take every other class into account. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Resistance here doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. In the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy. And once that process happens, it's that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society. — Questlove

For Sorel, the fact that Marx's prediction that contemporary society would increasingly divide itself into two, and no more than two, mutually hostile classes was falsified by time, could be offset by the readiness of the proletariat to remain intransigent, opposing its nonproletarian opponents with absolute determination. — A. James Gregor

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

I have chosen for my emblem a Star, representing the Virgin Mary, and the Eucharist. Those who know me as a professor of theology will remember my passion for the Eucharist from our classes. Blessed be God for this madness ... We must live our commitment to society steeped in the Eucharist. We must take the Eucharist to the streets, both in the heart of the city and on the outskirts, to the poor neighborhoods and to hospitals ... In order to obey the Resurrected Christ, I dare say with Pope John Paul II: 'Open wide the doors of your heart to the Holy Spirit.' — Nicolas Cotugno

Law and the Classes of Society, Judge — Stephen King

Our society will always remain an unstable and explosive compound as long as political power is vested in the masses and economic power in the classes. In the end one of these powers will rule. Either the plutocracy will buy up the democracy, or the democracy will vote away the plutocracy. — Irving Fisher

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered forms, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. — Karl Marx

The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class ... No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another. — Albert J. Nock

The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own. — Antonio Gramsci

With his Policraticus (1159), John of Salisbury had become the most famous Christian writer to compare society to a human body and to use that analogy to justify a system of natural inequality. In Salisbury's formulation, every element in the state had an anatomical counterpart: the ruler was the head, the parliament was the heart, the court was the sides, officials and judges were the eyes, ears and tongue, the treasury was the belly and intestines, the army was the hands and the peasantry and labouring classes were the feet. — Alain De Botton

Affirmative action ignores our society's real minorities - members of the disadvantaged classes, no matter what their race. We have this ludicrous bureaucratic sense that certain racial groups, regardless of class, are minorities. So what happens is those "minorities" at the very top of the ladder get chosen for everything. — Richard Rodriguez

Look you, there are only two classes of men, the magnanimous, and the rest; and I have reached an age when one has to take sides, to decide once and for all whom one is going to like and dislike, to stick to the people one likes, and, to make up for the time one has wasted with the others, never to leave them again as long as one lives. — Marcel Proust

Talking about success in society, no one can complain, because today everyone can choose what he or she wants. They don't just have to choose between being proletarian or middle-class. Those kinds of things do not exist anymore. Today working class boys can play football and become multimillionaires. On football! There are no longer classes, who say that we are poor, we are suppressed by you etc. — Odd Nerdrum

And here I would note the great benefit of party distinctions in saving the people at large the trouble of thinking. Hesiod divides mankind into three classes - those who think for themselves, those who think as others think, and those who do not think at all. The second class comprises the great mass of society; for most people require a set creed and a file-leader. Hence the origin of party, which means a large body of people, some few of whom think, and all the rest talk. The former take the lead and discipline the latter, prescribing what they must say, what they must approve, what they must hoot at, whom they must support, but, above all, whom they must hate; for no one can be a right good partisan who is not a thoroughgoing hater. — Washington Irving

But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. — John Dewey

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

It is only in relation to state action that the interests of different men become welded into "classes," for state action must always privilege one or more groups and discriminate against others. The homogeneity emerges from the intervention of the government in society. Thus, under feudalism or other forms of "land monopoly" and arbitrary land allocation by the government, the feudal landlords, privileged by the state, become a "class' (or "caste" or "estate"). And the peasants, homogeneously exploited by state privilege, also become a class. For the former thus constitute a "ruling class" and the latter the "ruled. — Murray N. Rothbard

The lawyers of the United States form a party which is but little feared and scarcely perceived, which has no badge peculiar to itself, which adapts itself with great flexibility to the exigencies of the time, and accommodates itself to all the movements of the social body; but this party extends over the whole community, and it penetrates into all classes of society; it acts upon the country imperceptibly, but it finally fashions it to suit its purposes. — Alexis De Tocqueville

But one afternoon Lila said softly that there was nothing that could eliminate the conflict between the rich and the poor.
"Why?"
"Those who are on the bottom always want to be on top, those who are on top want to stay on top, and one way or another they always reach the point where they're kicking and spitting at each other."
"That's exactly why problems should be resolved before violence breaks out."
"And how? Putting everyone on top, putting everyone on the bottom?"
"Finding a point of equilibrium between the classes."
"A point where? Those from the bottom meet those from the top in the middle?"
"Let's say yes."
"And those on top will be willing to go down? And those on the bottom will give up on going any higher?"
"If people work to solve all problems well, yes. You're not convinced?"
"No. The classes aren't playing cards, they're fighting, and it's a fight to the death. — Elena Ferrante

You don't have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system - a private system including media, intellectual opinion forming magazines and the participation of the most highly educated sections of the population. Such people ought to be referred to as "Commissars - for that is what their essential function is - to set up and maintain a system of doctrines and beliefs which will undermine independent thought and prevent a proper understanding and analysis of national and global institutions, issues, and policies". — Noam Chomsky

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

My own outlook and my values had been formed long ago. I did not believe in dividing people into rigid classes, and I did not believe in class struggle as a means to promote progress. I believed that to rebuild after so many years of war, China needed a peaceful enviroment and the unity of all sections of society, not perpetual revolution.
~150-151 — Nien Cheng

Utopias seem to be much more attainable than one would have believed in other times. And we currently find ourselves faced with a different kind of agonizing question: How can one avoid their definitive attainment? ... Utopias are attainable. Life leads us toward utopias. Perhaps a new century will begin, a century in which the intellectuals and the cultivated classes will dream again of ways to avoid utopias and to return to a non-utopian society, one less "perfect" and more free. — Aldous Huxley

The middle classes have a truly extraordinary conception of society. They really believe that human beings ... have real existence only if they make money or help to make it. — Friedrich Engels

Perhaps the most powerful cause of the breakdown of the closed society was the development of sea-communications and commerce. Close contact with other tribes is liable to undermine the feeling of necessity with which tribal institutions are viewed; and trade, commercial initiative, appears to be one of the few forms in which individual initiative and independence can assert itself, even in a society in which tribalism still prevails. These two, seafaring and commerce, became the main characteristics of Athenian imperialism, as it developed in the fifth century B.C. And indeed they were recognized as the most dangerous developments by the oligarchs, the members of the privileged, or of the formerly privileged, classes of Athens. — Karl Popper

For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes not the improvement of the existing society but the foundation of a new one. — Karl Marx

American liberty is being destroyed by Marxist doctrines that explain society in terms of hegemonic and oppressed groups - whether classes, races or genders - fighting for suzerainty. In these societies spun out of Marxist theorizing, good will does not exist, only the material interests of warring groups. Morality resides in the oppressed, but if the oppressed succeed in becoming hegemonic, their claim to moral supremacy evaporates. — Paul Craig Roberts

It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme. — William Graham Sumner

Our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war. — Vladimir Lenin

Going against the customs of the Court and high society that consider it normal to make the lower classes wait indefinitely, Hazrat Mahal has never been able to accept this disregard for others, this manner of monopolising their time....this tendency to make them waste their lives, just out of indifference. She knows very well that for those who have nothing, offering their time is proof of their devotion. — Kenize Mourad

European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition
of intellectual activity, of letters
and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America. — James A. Baldwin

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact ... — Charles Babbage

The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their
money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that
those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short,
of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which
those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is
directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be
truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims
and fantasies and sicknesses ... — C. Wright Mills

Due to climate change and growing world population, the demand for vital requirements for human survival will continue to rise. If the world is not producing as much food as demanded, the prices will continue to rise affecting the poor and lower classes more, in every society. It is sad, looking at the shocking statistics of people who die every day as well as the spread of preventable diseases in developing nations, just because people do not have access to clean drinking water. So are we proud of our leadership contribution? Are we doing enough to increase food production, harvest rain water and replenish underground water reserves? — Archibald Marwizi

If the fatal principle should come to be introduced, that, under pretense of organization, regulation, protection, or encouragement, the law may take from one party in order to give to another, help itself to the wealth acquired by all the classes that it may increase that of one class, whether that of the agriculturists, the manufacturers, the ship owners, or artists and comedians; then certainly, in this case, there is no class which may not try, and with reason, to place its hand upon the law, that would not demand with fury its right of election and eligibility, and that would overturn society rather than not obtain it. Even beggars and vagabonds will prove to you that they have an incontestable title to it. — Frederic Bastiat

The achievement of Tahrir Square wasn't just its grand political movement but the tiny personal battles fought and won against the frictions wearing down Egyptian society: between religions, classes, sexes, and generations. — Shereen El Feki

For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled. — Karl Hess

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. — Karl Marx

We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class. But we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having. — Jane Addams

210Suffering engenders passion; and while the prosperous blind themselves, or go to sleep, the hatred of the unfortunate classes kindles its torch at some sullen or ill-constituted mind, which is dreaming in a corner, and sets to work to examine society. The examination of hatred is a terrible thing.
Suffering begets rage, and while the prosperous turn a blind eye, or nod off which is always the same thing as shutting your eyes, the hate of the unprosperous masses has hits torch lit by some malcontent or warped mind dreaming away in a corner, somewhere, and it begins to examine society. Examination by hate is a terrible thing. — Victor Hugo

The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them. But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let us now return. — Jerome K. Jerome

Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. — Alexander H. Stephens

The ability to secure an independent livelihood and honorable employ suited to her education and capacities is the only true foundation of the social elevation of woman, even in the very highest classes of society. While she continues to be educated only to be somebody's wife, and is left without any aim in life till that somebody either in love, or in pity, or in selfish regard at last grants her the opportunity, she can never be truly independent. — Catharine Beecher

Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent. — Thomas Jefferson

There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question. From that, the obligation that the parties find in their daily polemics to borrow ideas and language from the judicial system. Since most public men are or have formerly been jurists, they make the habits and the turn of ideas that belong to jurists pass into the handling of public affairs. The jury ends up by familiarizing all classes with them. Thus, judicial language becomes, in a way, the common language; so the spirit of the jurist, born inside the schools and courtrooms, spreads little by little beyond their confines; it infiltrates all of society, so to speak; it descends to the lowest ranks, and the entire people finishes by acquiring a part of the habits and tastes of the magistrate. — Alexis De Tocqueville

My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre! — Francesca Jackson

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. — Karl Marx

Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society. — Vladimir Lenin

To learn theory by experimenting and doing.
To learn belonging by participating and self-rule.
Permissiveness in all animal behavior and interpersonal expression.
Emphasis on individual differences.
Unblocking and training feeling by plastic arts, eurythmics and dramatics.
Tolerance of races, classes, and cultures.
Group therapy as a means of solidarity, in the staff meeting and community meeting.
Taking youth seriously as an age in itself.
Community of youth and adults, minimizing 'authority.'
Educational use of the actual physical plant (buildings and farms) and the culture of the school community.
Emphasis in the curriculum on real problems and wider society, its geography and history, with actual participation in the neighboring community (village or city).
Trying for functional interrelation of activities. — Paul Goodman

Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes - one rich, one poor - both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division? — Ronald Reagan

Wendell and Tanya and I spoke at length about one of his themes that drives me with constancy, that of "good work." One aspect of this topic that I often regurgitate is his dislike for a society that celebrates the notion of "Thank God it's Friday!" Taking this position, people are necessarily saying that they despise five of every seven days of their lives. He said he first noticed it when he was teaching college, that people would answer the question "How are you doing?" with "Well, pretty good, for a Monday." This exposed a joylessness that filled Mr. Berry with concern. "It's a great harbinger of what's to come. If you don't like the classes about what you're going to do, you're not going to like going to do it." "More — Nick Offerman

The trains in any country contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Singhalese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar, with its gadgets and passengers, represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character. — Paul Theroux

While [Plato] affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fall by nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that. — John Dewey

The feeling of solidarity is the leading characteristic of all animals living in society. The eagle devours the sparrow, the wolf devours the marmot. But the eagles and the wolves respectively aid each other in hunting, the sparrow and the marmot unite among themselves against the beasts and birds of prey so effectually that only the very clumsy ones are caught. In all animal societies solidarity is a natural law of far greater importance than that struggle for existence, the virtue of which is sung by the ruling classes in every strain that may best serve to stultify us. — Pyotr Kropotkin

The mob is primarily a group in which the residue of all classes are represented. This makes it so easy to mistake the mob for the people, which also comprises all strata of society. While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for the "strong man," the "great leader." For the mob hates society from which it is excluded, as well as Parliament where it is not represented. — Hannah Arendt

In a market economy, a main determinant of social standing is participation in the labor market and the associated willingness to 'self-commodify' (e.g., Esping-Andersen 1999), the latter term nicely emphasizing how market economies render all forms of worth, even self-worth, a function of market valuation. When individuals fail to self-commodify, they fall outside the most fundamental institutions of the society, thereby reducing them to nonentities and social ciphers. This is why a mere transfer of income to the underclass... is inconsequential in relieving feelings of social exclusion. If anything, such a transfer only draws attention to the initial failure to self-commodify. although a class map also embodies distinctions of social standing among those who have an enduring commitment to the labor market, the social divide between the underclass and all other classes looms especially large because it captures this fundamental insider-outsider distinction. — Ravi Kanbur

Jealousy is the foundation of equality, but not of liberty ; putting man constantly on his guard against the encroachments of his neighbors. It prevents affability between different classes. There is no society without affection, without tradition, without respect, without mutual amenity. — Ernest Renan

Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context. — Thomas Sankara

The transfer of [ ... ] capabilities from various professional classes to the general public is epochal. — Clay Shirky

Society is composed of two great classes
those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. — Sebastien Chamfort

Story of Pakistan' development makes an interesting reading-how a country with lot of baggage of underdevelopment and sets of contradictions and constraints, keeps on stumbling from phase to phase, adopting with religious fervour the mainstream globally accepted development ideas, policies and strategies, which are current at that time. From exclusive emphasis on growth and trickle down of 1960s, she took a U-turn and tried to redistribute the fruits of growth in 1970s.Failing miserably in this endeavour which resulted in an expanded state capitalism; she started denationalizing everything in the following decades and adopted the new mantra of liberalization. She is now struggling to remove poverty in the midst of glaring extravagance of certain classes to avoid bursting at the seams of society. — Shahid Hussain Raja

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer. — Joseph Brodsky

We cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless in the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. — Christopher Hayes

Beneath it all I wish everyone would stop worrying about who is gay, who is straight, who is bisexual. Why must we define people by their sexuality? Why does Billy need to be gay Billy? Why does Sally need to be lesbian Sally? Why does Eric need to be Bi Eric? Why can't they just be Billy, Sally and Eric? Society groups people into classes to feel stability and safety. In doing so they break the hearts and souls of people like myself who don't fit into either class. — Diphallic Dude

I'm very appreciative of, and I also, having traveled the world, know that the United States is one of the few places where there really are no limitations. As long as you've got drive and hard work and a good idea and you can get out there and do your thing, there's no social classes, so in a lot of countries there's a big history of regardless of how much money you may make, there's still that little thing where you're not in society. That doesn't exist here. — Gloria Estefan

There are, Jefferson said, two classes of "disputants" that are especially common. The "first is . . . young students . . . the other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics." From both, Jefferson urged, "keep aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. — Davidson Butler