Castes Quotes - Page 4

• Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process.

  Arundhati Roy

  Real, Land, Class

  Arundhati Roy (2003). “War Talk”, p.41, South End Press

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• Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.

  Jack Kirby

  Humble, Artist, Editors

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

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• Proselytism is tolerated by Hinduism. Any man, whether he be a Shudra or Chandala, can expound philosophy even to a Brahmin. The truth can be learnt from the lowest individual, no matter to what caste or creed he belongs.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Philosophy, Men, Matter

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2171, Manonmani Publishers

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• A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.

  John Dewey

  Government, Democracy, Form

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Sidney Hook (2008). “The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education”, p.93, SIU Press

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• when we look up, it widens our horizons. we see what a little speck we are in the universe, so insignificant, and we all take ourselves so seriously, but in the sky, there are no boundaries. No differences of caste or religion or race.

  Julia Gregson

  Differences, Race, Sky

  Julia Gregson (2009). “East of the Sun: A Novel”, p.304, Simon and Schuster

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• Thinking of this University [Ambedkar University] today, we are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi because if there was anyone who fought for the weak in India, the first one to raise his voice for Scheduled Castes, that was Gandhiji. There were social workers before him but not any people who raised this matter in the political arena as he did.

  Rajiv Gandhi

  Thinking, Voice, People

  Rajiv Gandhi (1991). “Selected Speeches and Writings: January 1989 to November 1989”

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• Generally speaking, an Indian university must regard itself as one of the living organs of national reconstruction. It must discover the best means of blending together both the spiritual and the material aspects of life. It must equip its alumni irrespective of caste, creed or sex, with individual fitness, not for its own sake, not for merely adorning varied occupations and professions, but in order to teach them how to merge their individuality in the common cause of advancing the progress and prosperity of their motherland and upholding the highest traditions of human civilisation.

  Syama Prasad Mukherjee

  Spiritual, Sex, Mean

  Speech delivered at Nagpur University Convocation on 5th December 1936, "Educational Speeches" by Dr. Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, A.Mukherjee & Co. (Private) Ltd., 2 College Square, Kolkata 700 012, 1959.

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• To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Penance, Hinduism, Untouchability

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “Collected Works”

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• Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Respect, Hate, Soul

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• Give me the artist who breathes it like a native, and goes about his work in it as quietly as a common man goes about his ordinary business. Mozart did so; and that is why I like him. Even if I did not, I should pretend to; for a taste in his music is a mark of caste among musicians, and should be worn, like a tall hat, by the amateur who wishes to pass for a true Brahmin.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Artist, Men, Giving

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• Her (India's) great curse is caste; but English education has already proved a tremendous power in levelling the injurious distinctions of caste.

  Keshub Chandra Sen

  India, English Education, Distinction

  Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to welcome him, April 12, 1870.

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• I wish we could understand the word expert as expressing an attitude of mind which we can all acquire rather than the collecting of information by a special caste. ... Many of us are calling for experts because, acutely conscious of the mess we are in, we want someone to pull us out.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Attitude, Mind, Special

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• As the only class distinction available in a democracy, the college degree has created a caste society as rigid as ancient India's. Condemning elitism and simultaneously quaking in fear that our children won't become members of the elite, we send them to college, not to learn, but to "be" college graduates, rationalizing our snobbery with the cliché that high technology has eliminated the need for the manual labor that we secretly hold in contempt.

  Florence King

  Education, Children, Technology

  Florence King (1991). “Lump It Or Leave It”, p.77, Macmillan

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• We must muster the courage, we must find the will, we must do what is necessary to build a truly transformative movement that will end the history and cycle of caste in America.

  Michelle Alexander

  America, Movement, Ends

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• 'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality.

  Emma Goldman

  Men, Opportunity, America

  "The Individual, Society and the State". Book by Emma Goldman (p. 112), 1937.

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• The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the social, economic, and political challenges of our time.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Color, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Mean, Reality, Race

  "Come Hell or High Water". Book by Michael Eric Dyson, www.today.com. 2006.

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• One thing that was very clear to me is that the young people in a place like Annawadi aren't tripping on caste the way their parents are. They know their parents have these old views.

  Katherine Boo

  Views, People, Parent

  "Finding 'Life, Death And Hope' In A Mumbai Slum". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. February 8, 2012.

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• Materialism has come to the rescue of India in a certain sense by throwing open the doors of life to everyone, by destroying the exclusive privileges of caste, by opening up to discussion the inestimable treasures which were hidden away in the hands of a very few who have even lost the use of them. Half has been stolen and lost; and the other half which remains is in the hands of men who, like dogs in the manger, do not eat themselves and will not allow others to do so.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Dog, Men, Doors

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• It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Responsibility, Men

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• You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah

  Pakistan, Mosques, May

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Address to the Constituent Assembly, August 11, 1947.

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• I am not in favor of caste, nor separation of the brotherhood of mankind, and would as willingly live among white men as Black, if I had equal possession and enjoyment of privileges, but I shall never be reconciled living among them subservient to their will.

  Martin Delany

  Men, White Man, Justice

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• As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.

  William Winwood Reade

  Fall, Sleep, Men

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.507

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• Women were relegated to an inferior caste ... most dramatically with the coming of industrialization. 'Women's work' was segregated from significant human activity.

  Madonna Kolbenschlag

  Industrialization, Significant, Humans

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• Because of the expensive system and the competition among various groups, democracy needs a lot of money. As a natural consequence it becomes the slave of the great Jewish international finance which subjugates it by subvention. In this fashion the fate of a people is given into the hands of a caste of bankers.

  Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

  Fashion, Fate, Hands

  Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (2015). “For My Legionaries”, p.372, Black House Publishing Ltd

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