Working Class Quotes - Page 17

• I was a working-class kid from Boston. But I never lost my accent because I felt like that was what I was doing. I didn't have to perform Woody Guthrie like Bob Dylan did in the '60s, I just had to make myself be Eileen Myles and let that be my shield.

  Eileen Myles

  Kids, Boston, Class

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Democrats have pretty much given up on the white working class. That would require a commitment to economic issues and that's not their concern.

  Noam Chomsky

  Commitment, Issues, Class

  "Noam Chomsky on America's Economic Suicide". Interview with Laura Flanders / GRITtv, www.alternet.org. May 4, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The areas in which I teach are working-class history and African-American Studies and at its best the critical study of whiteness often grows out of those areas. The critical examination of whiteness, academic and not, simply involves the effort to break through the illusion that whiteness is natural, biological, normal, and not crying out for explanation.

  David Roediger

  Break Through, Class, Effort

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fifty years ago, great schools like the University of California and the City University of New York - as well as many state colleges - were tuition free. Today college is unaffordable for many working class families. For the sake of our economy and millions of Americans, we must make higher education more affordable.

  Bernie Sanders

  New York, School, College

  4 Copy quote

• We are moving in exactly the wrong direction in higher education. Forty years ago, tuition in some of the great American public universities and colleges was virtually free. Today, the cost is unaffordable for many working class families. Higher education must be a right for all - not just wealthy families.

  Bernie Sanders

  Moving, College, Years

  31 Copy quote

• As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.

  Eddie Marsan

  School, Class, People

  4 Copy quote

• If Hillary can't win the nomination - and it's clearly very, very hard for her - she's basically a stalking horse for McCain. She's preparing the demographic ground for McCain, by getting white working-class Democrats used to (if you will) not voting for Obama.

  Rich Lowry

  Horse, Winning, Class

  4 Copy quote

• I project that this next election - the 2016 election - if it is about anything thematically, it is going to be about that sense of rage and displacement among white working-class voters.

  Joy-Ann Reid

  Class, White, Voters

  Source: www.msnbc.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People don't work in factories, [they aren't] big muscular guys. The working class is flabby because they're sitting in front of a computer all day, but it's still their labor being extracted.

  Eric Drooker

  Class, People, Guy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mother was a housewife. Both from - well, my father was from a farming family, agricultural family in the north of England. And my mother came from a very working class.

  David Bowie

  Mother, Father, Class

  "David Bowie On The Ziggy Stardust Years: 'We Were Creating The 21st Century In 1971'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage equality is a very middle-class issue and voting rights is a very working-class issue. If you do not vote, who are you speaking for? Who will be the next Fannie Lou Hamer? If not you or someone you know, then who?

  Darryl Pinckney

  Rights, Class, Issues

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a product of state schools. I had a working-class family. We had no books. I was the first to go to college. But I didn't really think about it, or about making money. I was just going to be an artist, and I've been fortunate. I've never had to work for anybody nor have I had to write for money. Maybe that's another reason that I've been able to be productive. I haven't had to use my writing to make a living.

  T.C. Boyle

  Book, Writing, School

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ultimately, imperialism made even the British working classes suffer. This is a point which the British working classes found quite difficult to swallow, but they did, actually.

  Amartya Sen

  Class, Suffering, Imperialism

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. September 29, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

  Toni Morrison

  War, School, Europe

  "'I Regret Everything': Toni Morrison Looks Back On Her Personal Life". "Fresh Air", www.npr.org. April 20, 2015.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you can stitch together that kind of coalition with young people, bringing together conservatives and evangelicals - and I will tell you, in Iowa, we also won Reagan Democrats, working-class voters.

  Ted Cruz

  Iowa, Class, People

  "Face the Nation" with John Dickerson, www.cbsnews.com. February 21, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We will do well when young people, when working-class people come out. We do not do well when the voter turnout is not large. We did not do as good a job as I had wanted to bring out a large turnout.

  Bernie Sanders

  Jobs, Class, People

  "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd, www.nbcnews.com. February 21, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We did phenomenally well with young people. I think we did well with working class people.

  Bernie Sanders

  Thinking, Class, People

  "Meet the Press" with Chuck Todd, www.nbcnews.com. February 21, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Donald Trump is accomplishing getting, particularly white, working-class voters, who are turned off by their own party.

  Joy-Ann Reid

  Party, Class, White

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the women's movement began, it was a middle-class phenomenon. Certainly, black women had other stuff to think about in the '60s besides a women's movement. Working-class women were slow to get into it.

  Gail Collins

  Thinking, Class, Black

  4 Copy quote

• My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.

  Martin Scorsese

  Book, School, Italian

  4 Copy quote

• The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the 19th century.

  Alfred Marshall

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Class

  Alfred Marshall (1977). “Principles of Economics: An Introductory Volume”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there ever was a poet for the working class Billy Joe Shaver and Merle Haggard would be my nomination

  David Allan Coe

  Class, Would Be, Nominations

  10 Copy quote

• I still remember how upset I was in the aftermath of President Obama's election, where people in Republican leadership didn't say that, "Hey, I want to focus on the issues and values of our country," but, "My number one goal is to see that Barack Obama is not a two term president." That to me is outrageous. I would never do that. My number one goal is to fight to protect poor people, ethnic and religious minorities, working class folks.

  Cory Booker

  Country, Religious, Fighting

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel that I helped the working class by just saying there are no barriers, which I consider to be true.

  Michael Caine

  Class, Just Saying, Being True

  "The Prestige - Michael Caine interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The economy has definitely been improving, and things like the stock market are doing better, but the economy has to be good for working-class and middle-class families who work every day, send their kids to a school like is in front of my house, and they have to be able to enjoy their lives. That's why you don't pass a trade agreement that ships even more jobs overseas.

  Russ Feingold

  Jobs, School, Kids

  4 Copy quote