Classism Quotes

“Tanga Tanga: The conversation has always been about tribalism We need to change it"
Me: How?
TT: Let's talk about class! Hustler vs Dynasty.
Me: Separatists!”
― DON SANTO

“Gods and mortals never mixed happily in our stories.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“These were good people, common people; the salt of the earth people; people whom i should count myself fortunate to know”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There is a trailer that I pass on the drive to my parents’ house in Robards,
and obstructing the dance of the overgrown weeds
is a Trump sign.
Last summer, another sign went up next to it.
The sign, handily made of cardboard and black marker, said,
“EXTRA FRUITS AND VEGGIES FROM GARDEN,
STOP BY AND GET YOU SOME.”
― Belle Townsend

“I have heard that we are stupid for voting against our self interest,
and I know how hard it is to vote in my state.
I have heard that we are willfully uneducated,
and I have seen our artificially low property taxes
create our underfunded school system.
I have heard criticism from the experts,
but I have seen nothing but classism disguised
as neoliberal conjecture.
You cannot understand where I come from
if you are not also from there. I mean
that words fail
and nuance exists
and the enemy is never who we are taught to hate.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“We are all wrong by choosing to raise concerns, problems or matters when they only directly affect us.
If not, then we don’t care. We are not bothered by wrong things.
We are not bothered by unjust, unfairness, lawlessness, war, racism, nepotism, tribalism classism crime .”
― De philosopher DJ Kyos

“I believe in rage, believe in aiming it when I unleash it because I know it can be so powerful. My targets tend to be up, not down or sideways, from where I sit.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Connell’s initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was insightful, all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing. Presumably this was how the industry made money. Literature, in the way it appeared at these public readings, had no potential as a form of resistance to anything.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“You see, when you grow up
with a worldview shaped by the same ideas in
school, work, home, and everywhere else-
you are destined to be wrong when you go anywhere else.
We cannot find conclusions
on our own
when premises are
intentionally kept out of our reach.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“They have a pill for it. They have an industry. They make millions. Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, It's been an honour to serve my country.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Some people are not worth the weight of words. I do not argue with, nor do I debate with just any ol' body. I would have to respect you before I entertain either, I will leave my comment and then I will be on my way.”
― Niedria Kenny, Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player

“Like wealth discrepancies, mortality rates provide a rough indication of relative freedom, and when social classes die at radically different rates from one another, some are obviously less free. An important part of freedom is not having to make sacrifices for people who don't have to make sacrifices for you.”
― Sebastian Junger, Freedom

“The tent where the beer was sold was slushy with black mud. Country people stood sturdily about, some bursting with glee like ripe, rosy apples, others grim, lined and dour like cadaverous cheeses, glistening in the lamplight. The soft greyness outside faintly pricked with stars and seemingly transparent to all eternity had suddenly turned to inky blackness enclosing them tightly in a little glittering cave. All seemed aware of each other's perspiring faces and eager to communicate either good cheer or gloom; or held proudly apart with shining eye-balls and a flashing ring displayed on brown fingers curved round the smooth column of a glass. A man in corduroy trousers and a thick jacket, tilted his battered felt to the back of his head and bravely began to sing above the hurdy-gurdy din.”
― Isobel Strachey

“...what was in those days called social order, namely, the preservation of the privileges of the few who happened to have any, at the expense of the swinish multitude who happened to have none, except that of working and being shot at for the benefit of their betters:”
― Thomas Love Peacock, Maid Marian

“The lengths the Haves will go in order to deprive the Have Nots boggles the mind.”
― Stacy Lee

“The lengths the Haves will go in order to deprive the Have Nots boggles the mind.”
― Stacey Lee, The Downstairs Girl

“it's a blackmail that would not work on any other planet in the Galaxy. Their own sick social system gave us this weapon and I have no compunction about using it.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Currents of Space

“It is human nature to avoid being concerned with the welfare of the less privileged. So often I have observed those a little more fortunate walk by with stiff backs and upturned noses, as though they are infallible, removed from the suffering of humanity. So often the more fortunate assume an air of ridicule and contempt towards men of humbler birth. Out island is not free from discrimination, although it may be subtle and disguised. If you escape the race barrier, there is still that of higher income, and in some circles, that of a high school education.”
― Sri Nehru Maharaj, I, Vagabond

“. . . without any actual aristocracy in America, the best those who wanted to be upper class could do was create systems of exclusivity and codes of conduct.”
― Stephanie Clifford, Everybody Rise

“William's class understood that justice was like coal or potatoes. You ordered it when you needed it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“The echoes, the unfamiliar people, and the sense he’d carried all his life that wherever there was money—and money had outlasted the end of the world, as a state of mind if not in fact—he would always be uncomfortable.”
― Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt

“We’re all Malkuthians. And you know what? We’re all Theropods too.”

“Wh-wh-what’s that?”

“You know… Theropods. We’ve all got sharp teeth, we all walk on two legs, we all have arms shorter than our legs. For the most part, we’ve got two eyes, two hands, and a tail. I mean, some of us have more fingers and some of us have a horn or two, but how different does that really make us? We’re all just people, that’s what I’m saying. There shouldn’t be all this division and categorization. It just leads to more hate. It leads to more dysfunction. People look at me and think I’m privileged. People look at you and think you’re untouchable. They look at the two of us together and they think it’s fire and ice. It’s not right.”
― Steven Seril, The Destroyer of Worlds: An Answer to Every Question

“I come from a line of people
who could not discern their exploitation
from someone else’s:
people who will always stop for the car that is pulled over to the side of the road,
but participate in a culture
curated by a ruling class
that individualizes
and disconnects
the marginalized.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“My home is full of targets,
and they have been hit. Over and over and over.
Meanwhile, the bullseyes sit in penthouses and mansions,
unaffected, watching us
scramble over the arrows.”
― Belle Townsend, Push and Pull

“You may think these streets are yours to walk, but they belonged to someone else before: the queers, the hobos, the junkies, the trannies, the prozzies - those streets were theirs before they were yours so be careful, you may find you have to wipe your shoes clean before going into your nice apartment.”
― Tilly Lawless, Nothing but My Body

“The idea that we, our fathers and mothers, might be proud, hard-working and intelligent people doing something worthwhile, or even admirable, seemed to be beyond her. For a woman who saw success as being demonstrated through education, ambition, adventure and conspicuous professional achievement, we must have seemed a poor sample. I don't think anyone ever mentioned "university" in this school; no one wanted to go anyway - people that went away ceased to belong; they changed and could never really come back, we knew that in our bones. Schooling was a "way out", but we didn't want it, and we'd made our choice. Later I would understand that modern industrial communities are obsessed with the importance of "going somewhere" and "doing something with your life". The implication is an idea I have come to hate, that staying local and doing physical work doesn't count for much.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“The whole landscape here is a complex web of relationships between farms, flocks and families. My old man can hardly spell common words, but has an encyclopaedic knowledge of landscape. I think it makes a mockery of conventional ideas about who is and isn't 'intelligent'. Some of the smartest people I have ever known are semi-literate.”
― James Rebanks, The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District

“If you’re worried about overpopulation and you are not worried about overconsumption, you just don’t like poor people—and in this case poor brown people. So really what it boils down to.”
― Beau of the Fifth Column

“Marian found all this feminist generalisation and assertion both tedious and exhausting.”
― Ethel Mannin, Lucifer and the Child

“Is it not a recognised rule of these realms that none of the blood royal shall raise to royal honours those of the subjects who are by birth un-royal!”
― Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage