Bourgeoisie Quotes - Page 2

• ‎The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

  Leon Trotsky

  Party, Struggle, Class

  Leon Trotsky (1970). “Germany, 1931-1932”

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• There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The DEMOCRATIC idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them

  William Jennings Bryan

  Believe, Government, Class

  Speech at Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., 8 July 1896

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• Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity - it is, in a word, bourgeois - and so it attracts all of the same gripes.

  Neal Stephenson

  Powerful, Thinking, Two

  "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line". Book by Neal Stephenson, November 9, 1999.

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• The evolution of a bourgeoisie is a healthy phenomenon when it grows and prospers thanks to bourgeois values: hard work, honesty, personal responsibility.

  Anne Applebaum

  Honesty, Hard Work, Responsibility

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• 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

  Sex, War, Believe

  Irvine Welsh (2009). “T2 Trainspotting”, p.483, Random House

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• Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Ass, Fingers

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• In America we have only the bourgeoisie, and the love of the heroic is one of the few counterpoises available to us. In us the contempt for the heroic is only an extension of the perversion of the democratic principle that denies greatness and wants everyone to feel comfortable in his skin without having to suffer unpleasant comparisons. Students have not the slightest notion of what an achievement it is to free oneself from public guidance and find resources for guidance within oneself.

  Allan Bloom

  Greatness, America, Achievement

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Civilization, Noblemen, Shock

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.1927, e-artnow

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• The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.

  Karl Marx

  Men, Self, Hands

  Karl Marx, Lawrence H. Simon (1994). “Marx: Selected Writings”, p.161, Hackett Publishing

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• The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

  Karl Marx

  Common, Affair, Communist Manifesto

  Karl Marx, Frederick Engels (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.145, Haymarket Books

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• What is saved in the cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all mankind. It is not an art of the princes or the bourgeoisie. It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from their single lives.

  John Berger

  Art, Sky, People

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• No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

  Karl Marx

  Wages, Cash, Etc

  Karl Marx (1950). “Communist Manifesto: The revolutionary text that changed the course of history”, p.1832, Harriman House Limited

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• The modern picture of the artist began to form: The poor, but free spirit, plebeian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever -- in short, to be the bohemian.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Cutting, Artist, Forever

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• All freed, 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

  Real, Men, Air

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1968). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: selected works in one volume”

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• The burgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations into civilization.

  Karl Marx

  Communication, Mean, Civilization

  Karl Marx, David McLellan (2000). “Karl Marx: Selected Writings”, p.249, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones.

  Karl Marx

  Agitation, Communist Manifesto, Social

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1973). “Karl Marx on Society and Social Change: With Selections by Friedrich Engels”, p.76, University of Chicago Press

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• The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Endeavor, Workers, Nations

  "Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration". "Collected Works" by Vladimir Lenin, Vol. 24, www.marxists.org. 1977.

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• Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master…Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

  Mary Elizabeth Lease

  Country, Wall, Government

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• Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.

  Ayn Rand

  Country, America, Russia

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.143, Penguin

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• The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

  Leon Trotsky

  Philosophy, Mistake, Class

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• There was no opposition organized against Bela Kun. Like Lenin he surrounded himself with commissaries having absolute authority. of the 32 principle commissaries 25 were Jews, a proportion nearly similar to that in Russia. The most important of them formed a Directory of five: Bela Kun alias Kohn, Bela Vaga (Weiss), Joseph Pogany (Schwartz), Sigismond Kunfi (Kunstatter), and another. Other chiefs were Alpari and Szamuelly who directed the Red Terror, as well as the executions and tortures of the bourgeoisie.

  Leon V. DePoncins

  Russia, Important, Red

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• The unity of the bourgeoisie can be shaken only by the unity of the proletariat.

  Karl Marx

  Unity, Proletariat

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• Photography works upon the human eye: what is seen is reflected in the brain without the need for complicated thought. In this way the bourgeoisie takes advantage of the mental indolence of the masses and does good business as well.

  Willi Munzenberg

  Photography, Eye, Brain

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• Penal law was not created by the common people, nor by the peasantry, nor by the proletariat, but entirely by the bourgeoisie as an important tactical weapon in this system of divisions which they wished to introduce.

  Michel Foucault

  Law, People, Important

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• The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called practical types and novels with happy endings, since they soothe it with the idea that one can both accumulate capital and preserve innocence, be a beast and at the same time be happy...

  Anton Chekhov

  Happiness, Thinking, Greed

  "Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends: With Biographical Sketch". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1920.

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