Social Class In America Quotes & Sayings

Just when i thought i had everything, i lost it all — Jay-Z

When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself. — Shane MacGowan

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class. — Judith Martin

I focus on a simple message: when you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice. And when elites commit to equality for many different groups but arrogantly dismiss "the dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America,"6 this is a recipe for extreme alienation among working-class whites. Deriding "political correctness" becomes a way for less-privileged whites to express their fury at the snobbery of more-privileged whites. I don't like what this dynamic is doing to America. There are two reasons I think we have to try to replace it with a healthier one. The first is ethical: I am committed to social equality, not for some groups but for all groups. The second is strategic: the hidden injuries of class7 now have become visible in politics so polarized that our democracy is threatened. A few words — Joan C. Williams

Christ about Whom all — A.W. Tozer

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich. — Robert Reich

We should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren't as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe - and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America's working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause. — Paul Krugman

He sent Nelson a quotation that he attributed to Aristotle, instructing him in the importance of philanthropy, not money indiscriminately handed out but carefully considered giving. He advised, "Things which admit of use may be used either well or badly.... Anybody can give or spend money but to give the right amount of it at the right time and for the right cause and in the right way, that is not what anybody can do, nor is it easy. That is the reason why it is rare and laudable and noble to do well."8 — Darlene Rivas

Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): "No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class." George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on. On the other hand, town mechanics, laborers, and seamen, as well as small farmers, were swept into "the people" by the rhetoric of the Revolution, by the camaraderie of military service, by the distribution of some land. Thus was created a substantial body of support, a national consensus, something that, even with the exclusion of ignored and oppressed people, could be called "America. — Howard Zinn

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction. — Howard Zinn

I am confident that someday in the future The Rock, who was once a professional wrestler, will run for president of the United States, and I think that he will win. I have seen with my own eyes the power of The Rock. The Rock is a uniter, not a divider. When the BOP showed Walking Tall, the turnout for every screening all weekend long was unprecedented. The Rock has an effect on women that transcends divisions of race, age, cultural background - even social class, the most impenetrable barrier in America. Black, white, Spanish, old, young, all women are hot for The Rock. Even the lesbians agreed that he was mighty easy on the eyes. — Piper Kerman

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

What these men represented was not 'The West' but what was for this century a relatively new kind of monied class in America, a group devoid of social responsibilities because their ties to any one place had been so attenuated. — Joan Didion

As you know, I have always been curious about our immortality ... how it feels to live on and on through time ... I need speculate no longer, I have sampled eternity in Miss Campbell's fifth period "social studies" class. Three days on the concept of "manifest destiny," Vasile. THREE DAYS. I yearned to stand up, rip her lecture notes from her pallid hands, and scream, 'Yes, America expanded westward! Is that not logical, given that Europeans settled on the Eastern shore? What else were they to do? Advance vainly into the sea? — Beth Fantaskey

Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety. — Thomas Jefferson

As it has over the decades, the union movement stands for the fundamental moral values that make America strong: quality education for our children, affordable health care for every person-not just some-an end to poverty, secure pensions and wages that enable families to sustain the middle-class life that has fueled this nation's prosperity and strength. Union members and other working family activists don't just vote our moral values-we live them. We fight for them, day in, day out. Our commitment to economic and social justice propels us and everything we do. — John Sweeney

THE most important divide in America today is class, not race, and the place where it matters most is in the home. Conservatives have been banging on about family breakdown for decades. Now one of the nation's most prominent liberal scholars has joined the chorus. Robert Putnam is a former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Bowling Alone" (2000), an influential work that lamented the decline of social capital in America. In his new book, "Our Kids", he describes the growing gulf between how the rich and the poor raise their children. Anyone who has read "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray will be familiar with the trend, but Mr Putnam adds striking detail and some excellent graphs (pictured). This is a thoughtful and — Anonymous

When ... asked what I am writing, I have answered, "A book about social class in America," ... It is if I had said, "I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals. — Paul Fussell

In terms of the class structure that you see so much in European portraiture, I don't think one feels that in America in the 21st century. But we have these other kinds of social structures now, like celebrity, who establish new hierarchies. — Will Cotton

One of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal income tax is that it strips many middle class families of financial reserves & seems to lend support to campaigns for socialized medicine, socialized housing, socialized food, socialized every thing. The personal income tax has made the individual vastly more dependent on the State & more avid for state hand-outs. It has shifted the balance in America from an individual-centered to a State-centered economic & social system. — William Henry Chamberlin

Black Americans challenged segregation by repeatedly seeking admission to whites-only pools and by filing lawsuits against their cities. Eventually, these social and legal protests desegregated municipal pools throughout the North, but desegregation rarely led to meaningful interracial swimming. When black Americans gained equal access to municipal pools, white swimmers generally abandoned them for private pools. Desegregation was a primary cause of the proliferation of private swimming pools that occurred after the mid-1950s. By the 1970s and 1980s, tens of millions of mostly white middle-class Americans swam in their backyards or at suburban club pools, while mostly African and Latino Americans swam at inner-city municipal pools. America's history of socially segregated swimming pools — Jeff Wiltse

If you step in a nest of snakes, does it matter who bites you first? — George R R Martin

Man's most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him. — Margaret Mead

This is what class warfare looks like: The Business Roundtable - representing Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and others - has called on Congress to raise the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to 70, cut Social Security and veterans' COLAs, raise taxes on working families and cut taxes for the largest corporations in America. — Bernie Sanders

Crucial to this is what conservatives see as the essence of America - the Ladder of Success myth. As long as free enterprise flourishes and anyone with enough self-discipline and imagination can become an entrepreneur, the Morality of Reward and Punishment will hold and all will be well. The logic of conservatism locates so-called "social" problems within people, not within society. For this reason, it would make no sense to conservatives to use class and social forces as forms of explanation and justification for social policy. Nature — George Lakoff

I have learned that love is not a button which you can switch it on when wonderfully sizzling and switch off when heart broken. When you love you cannot put a past tense to it because if you do then it was never love in the first place. But if love was there, then it persists in different forms such as mutual respect but never hatred. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one's prejudices. — Oscar Wilde

But something about the interesting plot bothered me: one of the major rules that Wes had established on A Nightmare on Elm Street had been broken - Freddy was taken out of the dreams. In Nightmare 2, Freddy would be allowed to manifest outside of the dreamscape. It didn't hurt the quality of the script, but it messed up the continuity. On the plus side, I thought the bisexual-slash-homoerotic subtext was edgy and contemporary, and I appreciated how the plot investigated both the social-class system and the rise of suburban malaise. This may sound pretentious and over-analytical, but I believe that Freddy represented what looked to be a bad future for the post-boomer generation. It's possible that Wes believed the youth of America were about to fall into a pile of shit - virtually all the parents in the Nightmare movies were flawed, so how could these kids turn out safe and sane? - and he might have created Freddy to represent a less-than-bright future. — Robert Englund

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

Carl Bridenbaugh's study of colonial cities, Cities in the Wilderness, reveals a clear-cut class system. He finds: The leaders of early Boston were gentlemen of considerable wealth who, in association with the clergy, eagerly sought to preserve in America the social arrangements of the Mother Country. By means of their control of trade and commerce, by their political domination of the inhabitants through church and Town Meeting, and by careful marriage alliances among themselves, members of this little oligarchy laid the foundations for an aristocratic class in seventeenth century Boston. — Howard Zinn

It is important to us to understand and discuss a "vision" with both leagues and then sponsor the league that best matches our views and direction on growing the sport. To do that, there must be a tie back to our grass roots efforts. In short, our marketing plan for new players has to ultimately point to a league and its players. — John Robinson

Do you have a problem with us hunting down and killing a god from your pantheon?"
"If it is a god, then you cannot kill it, and if you can kill it, then it is not a god. I do not mourn the death of false gods. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Emma narrowed her eyes. "Wow, I guess we have a lot in common. Maybe we should get t-shirts that say, 'We were both fucked over by Aidan Fitzgerald'! — Katie Ashley

I think squaring up success to equal money is silly, because it's so undeserved. — Steven Conrad

We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:
IM-1: Infectious Magic Area
Do Not Enter
Authorized Personnel Only
A second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:
Keep out, stupid.
"We aren't going to keep out, are we?" Ascanio asked.
"No."
"Awesome. — Ilona Andrews

The greatest predictor of social pathology in children is fatherlessness, greater even than poverty. In his book Fatherless Generation (Zondervan) John Sowers claims, "The most reliable predictor for gang activity and youth violence is neither social class nor race or education but fatherlessness." In Fatherless America (Basic Books) David Blankenhorn says, "It is no exaggeration to say that fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation. It is the engine driving our most urgent social problems". I am convinced that the damage to humanity caused by the epidemic of unfathered men and women is far greater than the damage caused by war and disease combined. — Craig Wilkinson