Working Class Quotes - Page 13

• I always feel like a bit of an outsider myself, but as a working class lad, the system was always against me. The British system itself and then of course all the illnesses that were challenging to me.

  John Lydon

  Class, Challenges, Outsiders

  Source: www.axs.com

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• What I hear people talking about are things that anybody of any color or any religion or any sexual orientation can get with. They cannot earn a decent living if they`re working class folks. They`re worried about retirement if they`re in their 40s and 50s. They`re worried about sending their kids to college. If we focus on what really matters, we can get there.

  Keith Ellison

  Retirement, Kids, College

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• There was an assumption that aerial bombing of civilians in World War II would cause fragile, working-class people to basically have nervous breakdowns and it would paralyze the state. That was the logic of aerial bombing. In fact, it doesn't happen at all, but the logic behind aerial bombing has never stopped, even though it never demoralizes, terrorizes, or paralyzes a population.

  Rebecca Solnit

  War, Class, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I would like to remind you that both assimilation and integration apply to the working classes in the nineteenth century, at least in Britain and also Germany. Like most outsider groups compared with the establishment, the working classes were treated more or less with the same kind of stigmatization as immigrant groups are treated today.

  Norbert Elias

  Today, Outsiders, Kind

  Source: quod.lib.umich.edu

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• On the policy front, I just believe that Barack Obama was misguided. That he somehow sees this country as being in need of a drastic overhaul. What he tried to do actually hurt the country rather than helped it and the best example is Obamacare. It's a good idea to insure people who can't or won't buy insurance but you can't punish the working class to make it happen, which he did. Now everybody's paying higher premiums and more deductibles that's coming out of working people's pockets and that's one of the reasons that his legacy has been refuted.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Country, Hurt, Believe

  Source: deadline.com

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• When Benjamin Disraeli spoke of the 'two nations' in Britain he was perfectly right, only the working classes were not exactly a nation. But the gap in behavioral standards and in outlook, and of course in standards of living, were enormous. And in course of time, at least in countries such as Britain, the working classes more or less adopted and have become assimilated to the standards of the so-called 'gentle' classes. That is assimilation.The working class has hardly been able to govern, but they are no longer outsiders in relation to the state as they were before.

  Norbert Elias

  Country, Outsiders, Relation

  Source: quod.lib.umich.edu

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• You could say that the vote to withdraw from Europe is, it's really a vote of the British middle class, the working class, to withdraw from the U.S. neoliberalism that has been running Europe for the last ten years.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Vote, Middle Class

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• In my view, it is not a question of Trump having won the election, it's a question of Democrats having lost the election. Democrats need a strong progressive agenda which says to the working class of this country, we are going the stand and fight for you, we're going to raise the minimum wage, pay equity for women, we're going to rebuild the infrastructure, and we're going to guarantee health care to all people as a right. We're going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Strong, Fighting

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• He [Donald Trump] is got no ethics when it comes to business and can they turn this story line, talk to his white working class base and say, he`s hired illegal immigrants. He doesn`t look out for you. He`s taking your kids money at Trump University and he is being accused of fraud.

  Joan Walsh Anglund

  Kids, Class, White

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• If you want to really sort of quantify the dereliction of the Republican establishment, those two facts are the most important two facts. One, that they didn`t even understand the base of their own party, white working class voters who you know what, don`t care about tax cuts for the rich, really aren`t interested in the things that the elite part of their party want, including immigration reform. And number two, they spent eight months avoiding finding opposition research to use against the guy who was becoming the front-runner in their party that they don`t want.

  Chris Hayes

  Party, Cutting, Numbers

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• I think in theory, Donald Trump could be a formidable candidate, right? The theory of him is, if he ignites working class white voters, he can put Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, states like Ohio in play for the Republicans.

  Joy-Ann Reid

  Thinking, Ohio, Class

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• I did my BA in English lit, and hated the restriction - I'd always read more in translation than not; coming from a working-class background, what I knew of as British literature - the writers who made big prize lists and/or were stocked in WH Smith, Doncaster's only bookshop until I was 17 - seemed incredibly, alienatingly middle-class. Then in 2009, just after the financial crash, I graduated with no more specific skill than 'can analyse a bit of poetry'.

  Deborah Smith

  Class, Skills, Literature

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Coming from a working-class background, where my father did manual labor, was a good grounding; I was obsessed with getting a job or getting out of the house at 15.

  Johnny Marr

  Jobs, Father, Class

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I think in all small towns, all kind of working class communities around the world. They are kind of similar.

  Sacha Baron Cohen

  Thinking, Class, Community

  Source: screenrant.com

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• My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me - when my family was working-class, and we were struggling.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Struggle, Class, Decision

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• You come out of a working-class environment, you know, working-class kids always put them themselves together because it's one of the only things they had. You had control of your image.

  Ian Astbury

  Kids, Class, Together

  "Ian Astbury on the Death of the Rock Star". Interview with Mick Stingley, www.esquire.com. December 27, 2013.

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• The decision is I'm going to do everything I can to fight for the working class of this country, the low-income people against income and wealth inequality, do everything we can about climate change.

  Bernie Sanders

  Country, Fighting, Class

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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• There's a lot of good rappers in England at the moment. There's a lot of good dance acts. A lot of good, young guitar acts. I think a lot of groups came from that dole culture of the late 80's/early 90's - it's not as easy now. I think there's a dearth of working class bands.

  Ian Brown

  Thinking, Rapper, Guitar

  Source: rocksucker.co.uk

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• It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped America of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.

  Donald Trump

  Class, America, Decision

  "Festival of Slights, the 5th Night: Trump’s Closing Argument to Voters" by Ben Dreyfuss, www.motherjones.com. December 16, 2017.

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• Our tragedy today is not just that millions of people who called themselves communist or socialist were physically liquidated in Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, not just that China and Russia, after all that revolution, have become capitalist economies, not just that the working class has been ruined in the United States and its unions dismantled, not just that Greece has been brought to its knees, or that Cuba will soon be assimilated into the free market - it is also that the language of the Left, the discourse of the Left, has been marginalised and is sought to be eradicated.

  Arundhati Roy

  Capitalist Economy, Iran, Class

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• One question is: Who is the working class today, and how has it changed? Where are we in that? I don't have a knee-jerk kind of 1930s thing about we must build the unions and that's the way to the future. I'm writing this book right now called Pallin' Around, and the subtitle is: "Talking to the Tea Party." And frankly I find talking to the Tea Party exhilarating, I love it.

  Bill Ayers

  Party, Book, Writing

  Source: thepointmag.com

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• Who's the big government guy? These labels are nonsense. And the Tea Party, if you want to call them working class, you know, a working-class insurgency from below, they are a mass of contradictions; they don't have a single consistent viewpoint; but part of their impulse is to be wary of government.

  Bill Ayers

  Party, Government, Class

  Source: thepointmag.com

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• I am sure that the experience of growing up in the heart of the working class and learning from my parents, and especially from my grandmother (who also worked on a barge boat as a cook and a servant for rich folks in Manhattan, Newport, Grosse Point, and Sewickley, all havens of the very rich), that life was not especially fair and always full of bad possibilities, helped shape my future take on life. Then what really transformed my thinking was the war in Vietnam and trying to be a good teacher.

  Michael Yates

  Teacher, Growing Up, War

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The Vietnam War was so obviously evil and bore down most heavily upon working class youth that it made me think about things more deeply than I had before. It disillusioned me completely and forever about the government. And it made me aware that the media and the government lied almost as a matter of course. But it also opened my eyes to what was really going on in America.

  Michael Yates

  War, Eye, Thinking

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Of course we can talk about the radical potential of youth. But in the U.S. it is still the case that most youth are conservative and not very sympathetic to the working class.

  Michael Yates

  Class, Conservative, Youth

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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