E. P. Thompson Quotes

In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class.

The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles.

The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city.

I didn't go into 'Rabbit Hole' wanting to write about class. I think because of who I am it somehow found its way into it.

All systems of political administration or governmental machinery are but the reflex of the economic forms which underlie them

The system of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society…They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways

The political tendencies of the various social classes are based on a correct practical instinct.

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

The Left’s essential mental instrument is class analysis, according to which society is best understood in terms of the competing interests of aggregate groups.

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups.

The key thing about us is that we all belong to multiple tribes. Even if we are predisposed into dividing the world into 'us' and 'them,' it's incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who is an 'us' and who is a 'them' at any given moment.

The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.

Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes - one rich, one poor - both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?

From class consciousness to class hatred was but a step.

The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes.

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their difference and specialness.

The greatest trick the rich - and their cheerleaders on the right - ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn't exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.

What's so amazing about this historical moment is that it is bringing class to the fore and we have to think about the nature of work and hierarchy.

Youth has become a class.

Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

The American uppermiddle-class citizen is a composite of negatives. He is largely delineated by what he is not.

In every society where property exists there will ever be a struggle between rich and poor. Mixed in one assembly, equal laws can never be expected; they will either be made by the member to plunder the few who are rich, or by the influence to fleece the many who are poor.

I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.