Middle Class Quotes - Page 2

• A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.

  Lionel Trilling

  Thinking, Government, Class

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• In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before.

  Mitt Romney

  Country, Gasoline Prices, Class

  Mitt Romney's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, www.npr.org. August 30, 2012.

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• For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

  Hermann Hesse

  Class, Optimism, Contentment

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.27, Macmillan

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• The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate.

  Aristotle

  Class, Perfect, Community

  Aristotle (1919). “A treatise on government: translated from the Greek of Aristotle”

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• For though we are perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is nothing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the upper.

  Charles Dickens

  Class, Safety, Age

  "Life, Letters, and Speeches of Charles Dickens".

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• Now that I'm more middle class, I have access to consumer goods. I do enjoy feminine frippery, feminine doo-da, stuff like that.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim

  Class, Stuff, Feminine

  "Walking with Her Muse: An Interview with Shirley Geok-lin Lim". Contemporary Women's Writing, Volume 8, Issue 2, 1 July 2014, Pages 123 - 135, academic.oup.com. June 22, 2013.

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• Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.

  Paul Krugman

  Class, Political, Action

  Paul Krugman (2015). “The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming America From The Right”, p.25, Penguin UK

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• When in one area of the world the standard of living and the size of the middle class increases, it is going to have an effect elsewhere in the world as well.

  Christine Lagarde

  Class, World, Size

  "Christine Lagarde on slow growth, inequality and fighting cynicism". Interview with Kevin Carmichael, www.macleans.ca. September 12, 2016.

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• In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

  Nick Clooney

  Class, Wiping Out, Saving

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• Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Distance, Class

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• The middle classes shouldn’t be getting tax cuts, while those in tough, poorly paid jobs, who are already running out of money at the start of the month, are getting their benefits cut. That’s not one-nation conservatism; it’s two nations conservatism.

  Tim Montgomerie

  Running, Jobs, Cutting

  "Can David Cameron make Tories the new party of social justice?" by Daniel Boffey, www.theguardian.com. May 23, 2015.

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• Most middle-class people I know don't really live like me. Middle-class people worry a lot about money. They worry a lot about job security, and they do a lot of nine-to-five stuff.

  Irvine Welsh

  Jobs, Class, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class. Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!

  Elizabeth Warren

  Hard Work, Class, America

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• Left-leaning policies - I'm 52 years old, I've been to Cuba, I've been to dysfunctional state oriented places - left-leaning policies fail the lower and middle classes.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Years, Class, Cuba

  Source: gawker.com

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• Here’s a current example of the challenge we face. At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only thirteen people. Where did all those jobs disappear to? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?

  Jaron Lanier

  Photography, Jobs, Class

  "Who Owns the Future?". Book by Jaron Lanier, 2013.

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• My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn't believe in mortgages.

  Hillary Clinton

  Father, Believe, School

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• The Bible affects everybody's life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia. The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.

  Ngugi wa Thiong'o

  Christian, Europe, Class

  Source: www.alternet.org

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• I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Girl, Mother, Teacher

  Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

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• Donald Trump would end up raising taxes on middle-class families.

  Hillary Clinton

  Class, Ends, Middle

  Source: www.independent.co.uk

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• After an initial solo album in which the young [Bob] Dylan was just finding his voice (i.e., reinventing himself from the middle-class Robert Zimmerman into a pseudo-hobo Woody Guthrie), Dylan put out two acoustic albums that forever changed popular music.

  Jay Michaelson

  Class, Two, Voice

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• It's possible that we'll screw up the climate so badly that most of us will die and a few breeding pairs will remain somewhere in the arctic. What's more likely is that we'll continue remaking the planet, driving many species to extinction, killing millions of people through the indirect effects of climate change, making life even harder for the poor and powerless than it is now, and making it a little more difficult for the global middle class to live the lives to which they have become accustomed - in other words, business as usual, only worse.

  Dale Jamieson

  Class, People, Screw Ups

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• My plan is based on growing the economy, giving middle-class families many more opportunities. I want us to have the biggest jobs program since World War II, jobs in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.

  Hillary Clinton

  Jobs, War, Opportunity

  Transcript of the Third Presidential Debate, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 2016.

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• We've got to get back to rebuilding the middle class, the families of America. That's where growth will come from.

  Hillary Clinton

  Class, America, Growth

  The third presidential debate between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 2016.

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• Today, the message is that we have to help the middle class and the aspirational worker in the United States.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Class, United States, Today

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• The rise of globalization, the rise of finance capital, the elimination of the manufacturing base, the decimation of the working class, particularly in terms of those who had some comforts that approximated what the middle class had.

  Henry Giroux

  Class, Comfort, Finance

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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