Lower Class Quotes - Page 2

• Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire of any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near advantage.

  Samuel Johnson

  Class, Curiosity, Desire

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.206

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• In boxing, where most of the guys are from lower-class backgrounds and have darker skin than most of the fans, one might fear that the athletes are being exploited. But that narrative doesn't hold up very well in the world of MMA, where 99 percent of fighters are amateurs who will never earn a dime. They aren't seeking fame and fortune. For the most part, these guys are fighting because they want to and because it gives them an opportunity to strive for something big in their lives. It gives them a chance to become their best selves.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Athlete, Fighting, Opportunity

  "A Talk With The Savage English Professor". Interview with Sam Harris, www.thedailybeast.com. March 5, 2015.

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• When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends.

  Ernest Bramah

  Mean, Class, Might

  Ernest Bramah (2016). “THE KAI LUNG FANTASY SERIES: The Wallet of Kai Lung, Kai Lung's Golden Hours & Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat: The Transmutation of Ling, The Story of Yung Chang, The Probation of Sen Heng, The Experiment of the Mandarin Chan Hung, The Confession of Kai Lung, The Vengeance of Tung Fel and more”, p.41, e-artnow

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• The taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty, even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty that belongs to them as natural growths.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Aesthetic Beauty, Growth

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Innovation, Characteristics

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.124, Courier Corporation

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• The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is, as such, the true underlying support on which the improvement of the human species rests. The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs; the former are the thinking and designing [ Entwerfende ] part, the latter the executive part.

  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

  Thinking, Class, Two

  "The System of Ethics According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre". Book by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1798.

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• I don't know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don't feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Appreciation, Book, Writing

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• First impressions of mediaeval life are usually coloured by the courtly romances of Malory and his later refiners. Chaucer brings us down to reality, but his people belong to a prosperous middle-class world, on holiday and in holiday mood. Piers Plowman stands alone as a revelation of the ignorance and misery of the lower classes, whose multiplied grievances came to a head in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

  William Langland

  Holiday, Ignorance, Reality

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• Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.

  Terry Pratchett

  Running, Army, Class

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “The Carpet People”, p.148, Random House

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• I am not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life--always growing and increasing--is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the former of whom especially are the strength of the priests.

  Thomas Huxley

  Running, Class, White

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

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• Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Class, Ennui, Constant

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• When the Democrats are attacked for [inciting class warfare] they shrink back. They don't say what obviously should be said, "Yes, there is class warfare. There has always been class warfare in this country." The reason the Democrats shrink back is because the Democrats and the Republicans are on the same side of the class war. They have slightly different takes. The Democrats are part of the upper class that is more willing to make concessions to the lower class in order to maintain their power.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, War, Order

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• Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

  Damian Lewis

  Good Life, Class, Long

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• These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

  Howard Zinn

  Fall, Class, People

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.563, Pan Macmillan

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• Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

  David Sedaris

  Sex, Writing, Class

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• Those other lands were Christian, and they boiled with bigotry. The rulers themselves were more or less tolerant, for they depended upon Jews as their financiers. But the lower classes had no use for them, and butchered them whenever a righteous excuse could be found. And righteous excuses were not wanting. If a plague broke out, of course the Jews had poisoned the wells. If a war was lost, of course the Jews had aided the enemy. If a boy mysteriously disappeared, of course the Jews had murdered him to procure blood for their Passover drink.

  Lewis Browne

  Christian, War, Boys

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• All the old history was written for the amusement of the ruling classes. The lower classes couldn't read, and their rulers didn't care about remembering what happened to them.

  Frank Zappa

  Class, Amusement, Care

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.200, Simon and Schuster

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• The lower classes are such fools. They waste their money on the pools. I bet, of course, but that's misleading. One must encourage bloodstock breeding.

  Bernard Fergusson, Baron Ballantrae

  Horse, Class, Racing

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• No state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) ... that no check whatever has existed to early marriages, among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families, or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life.

  Thomas Malthus

  Class, Eugenics, Euthanasia

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population and Other Writings”, p.49, Penguin UK

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• The whole famous Reign of Terror [of the 1790s] in fifteen months guillotined 2,596 aristos. The Versaillists [the anti-Communards of 1871] executed 20,000 before their firing squads in one week. Do these figures represent the comparative efficiency of guillotine and modern rifle or the comparative cruelty of upper and lower class mobs?

  Guy Endore

  Squad, Class, Rifles

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• Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes. . . . it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it.

  Aldous Huxley

  Country, Nature, Class

  Aldous Huxley (1950). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Brave new world”

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• Society is doing a great deal for the workingman, for the lower classes; but it seems to me, sometimes, as if it formed associations to obtain for them toys, and then formed other associations to teach them to play with them.

  John Bartholomew Gough

  Class, Play, Association

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• Inequality has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

  Matthew Arnold

  Class, Justice, Diversity

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.814, Delphi Classics

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• The lower classes of men, though they do not think it worthwhile to record what they perceive, nevertheless perceive everything that is worth noting; the difference between them and a man of learning often consists in nothing more than the latter's facility for expression.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Thinking, Men, Expression

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• I have never said, as is sometimes believed, or even suggested that lower-class children should not learn the so-called educated norm of the Portuguese language of Brazil. What I have said is that the problems of language always involve ideological questions and, along with them, questions of power.

  Paulo Freire

  Children, Class, Society

  Paulo Freire (2005). “Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those who Dare Teach”

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