The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. Karl Marx, clause 1 article The International Working Men’s Association
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that, thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. Karl Marx
The press and the pulpit have in every age and every nation been on the side of the exploiting class and the ruling class. Eugene V Debs
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... continue – and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
This is a far cry from a civilised image of Roman society. Such bloody brawls mirror a waning world while the Empire is at its peak. A social crisis is brewing. The egalitarian ideal of the Republic is over. The gap between social classes is widening. The Roman Empire: Grandeur and Decadence
The London poor with their hideous voices and clothes and bad teeth make one doubt whether any decent life will ever be possible, or whether it matters we are at war or peace. Virginia Woolf
Political discussion in the United States is usually restricted to the moderate to conservative range that precludes discussion of class conflict. If ‘class warfare’ is mentioned, it is because a conservative wants to suggest that certain matters should be kept off-limits in American political discussion. Steve Brouwer
No, monsieur. Because you are a great lord you think you a great genius! Nobility, rank, position, fortune – how proud they make a man feel! What have you done to deserve such advantages? Pierre Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro
To the wonderful evening given to us by Silvia with her magnificent virgin bride of Lammermoor. The Exterminating Angel 1962 starring Enrique Garcia Alvarez & Jacqueline Andere & Cesar del Campo & Nadia Haro Oliva & Ofelia Montesco & Patricia de Morelos & Augusto Benedico & Luis Beristain & Xavier Loya & Ofelia Guilmain et al, director Louis Bunel
Bloke: Which lodge?
Other bloke: Dawn Twenty-One. ibid.
Life is amusing. And strange. ibid. two lovers
I think the lower orders are insensitive to suffering. Have you ever seen a wounded bull? It’s impassive. ibid.
Why don’t they come for us? ibid. hysterical woman
Shut up, Nobile. You’re responsible for all this. We’re all victims of a joke that’s in very bad taste. ibid. bloke to bloke
I can’t stand it. Why don’t you kill me and end it all? ibid. hostess to doctor
Even the strongest are losing their heads. ibid.
I can’t feel anything; we need innocent blood. We must await the sacrifice of the sacrifice of the last sheep. ibid. blondie
I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. Albert Einstein, My World-View, 1931
Doesn’t class make a difference? L P Hartley, The Hireling, chauffeur to M’Lady
It is this determination to seize power from the ruling class and transfer it to the people as a whole that differentiates the present political struggle from all those that have gone before. Sir Stafford Cripps, 1933
But the two classes so beheld in contrast, might they not seem to belong to two different nations? John Foster, Essay ‘Evils of Popular Ignorance’, 1820
From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away. Raymond Chandler
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. Oscar Wilde
In general the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. Voltaire
The real solvent of class distinction is a proper measure of self-esteem. Alan Bennett, English dramatist
Our cause is a common one. It is war between poverty and wealth ... This moneyed power is fast eating up the substance of the people. We have made war upon it, and we mean to win it. If we can, we will win through the ballot box; if not, then we shall resort to sterner means. William Sylvis
Jack Matthews: killed by social class. He was an unskilled labourer. A member of the lowest social class. Now Mr Matthews has died of lung cancer aged only fifty-four. His risk of early death was twice as great as someone from the middle classes. What’s more he lived in Newcastle. And the north has worse health than the south. The younger you are, the most effectively class kills. Horizon: Death of the Working Classes, BBC 1988
There are five classes: Professional, Managerial, Skilled, Partly Skilled, Unskilled ... The results are shocking. ibid.
The gap has got wider. ibid.
Perhaps the value of the Longitudinal Study [1971-1975] has been to confirm the reality of the health gap between classes. ibid.
The Health Divide: Inequalities in Health in 1980s. ibid. Margaret Whitehead, Health Educational Council report Margaret Whitehead, March 1987
Black [report] called for the end to Child Poverty. ibid.
A right to good health: at present that right doesn’t exist. ibid.
And it looks as though we’re in for a splendid afternoon’s sport on this the 127th Upper Class Twit of the Year Show. Monty Python’s And Now For Something Completely Different, 1972
The unprecedented rise of pop music in the 1960s was just one of the many collisions between class and culture that have changed this country in the last hundred years. Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, BBC 2012
The working classes were to emerge from a rigid system, but did that leave much of their distinctive culture as derelict as the old industrial sites? ... The Middle Class despised the working class and its culture. ibid.
Is class as we used to know it still with us? ibid.
Nancy Astor was untypical. She was interested in social reform and became the first woman MP. ibid.
The middle classes saw themselves as the backbone of the nation. ibid.
Kipling wanted the British, I think, to be one class. To be above the class system. ibid.
Wells’ views on class are most clearly seen in his science fiction. But the future Wells predicted for the human race was a dark and bleak one, with savage class predictions. ibid.
The working class at the time could and did nourish genius: Thomas Hardy for instance. And D H Lawrence. He was brought up in a mining community. ibid.
An interest in the sexual politics of love. ibid.
Sorrell is bitter about the profiteers who sat out the war. But he has another target: Sorrell and I presume Warwick Deepings’ real venom is reserved for the working class, who he sees as brutes getting real for a class war. ibid.
In Sorrell & Son class issues come to be crystallised around the matter of Kit’s education. ibid.