William E. Gladstone Quotes

No writer before the middle of the 19th century wrote about the working classes other than as grotesque or as pastoral decoration. Then when they were given the vote certain writers started to suck up to them.

Government in this country is made up of the landed interest, which alone has the right to be represented. As for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation of them? What security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkling of an eye.

Women are now in the situation of the mass of mankind a few years since, when science and learning were in the hands of priests, and property was held by vassalage.

Those of you who believe that the nigger is your equal and ought to be on the same plane as the white have a perfect right to believe that and vote for Mr. Lincoln.

Free society! We sicken at the name. What is it but a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moon-struck theorists? All the northern, and especially the New England states, are devoid of society fitted for well-bred gentlemen. The prevailing class one meets with is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, and small farmers who do their own drudgery, and yet are hardly fit for association with a southern gentleman’s body servant.

The South came to adopt a social philosophy wonderfully like that of Germany …. Inequality became the natural order; slavery was accepted as a blessing from heaven; and masters of plantations became the supermen from whom ideas and good reasoning were confidently expected.

If a free negro in North Carolina attempt to teach a slave to read, or if he give to a slave a religious tract, a spelling book or the bible, he may be imprisoned or take thirty-nine lashes!

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

There seems to be an idea abroad in this land as well as in others, that a certain class of people are for the purpose of producing servants for another class of people, and that this servant-producing class has no right to give their children an education that is calculated to elevate them above the position of their parents. We are not in sympathy with this idea.

We cannot hope to succeed in directing this increasingly complex civilization unless we can draw all the talent of leadership from the whole people. One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class. If we would prevent the growth of class distinctions and would constantly refresh our leadership with the ideals of our people, we must draw constantly from the general mass. The full opportunity for every boy and girl to rise through the selective processes of education can alone secure to us this leadership.

In 12 years of public school I can never remember any of my teachers describing slavery for what it was.

The fundamental reason for anti-Semitism is that Jewish Law, the law of liberated slaves, carefully protects the rights of ordinary workers, and this has always been offensive to the Western ruling classes.

I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

Ireland is a place where conditions are never normal—where class is distorted by race and an alien aristocracy.

That means nigger citizenship!!!

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

In a superior civilization, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste... would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

We need never have white slaves in the South, because we have black ones. Our citizens, like those of Rome and Athens, are a privileged class. We should train and educate them to deserve the privileges and to perform the duties which society confers on them. Instead, by a low demagoguism depressing their self-respect by discourses on the equality of man, we had better excite their pride by reminding them that they do not fulfill the menial offices which white men do in other countries.

The slaves are freed by an accident. An accident of war's necessity - not on principle. The manner of their sudden emancipation, unless they are removed, will bring a calamity more appalling than the war itself. It must create a race problem destined to grow each day more threatening and insoluble....

You may talk about Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote. Today we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it as long as you please.

Both class and race survive education, and neither should.

We are still a nation deeply divided by race and class.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.