Thomas Mann Quotes

Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel pressure to fake it, at least in public. Nobody wants the stigma of being thought poor.

I'm tired of people on trust funds telling people on food stamps how to live.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

For a number of years, I've wondered if people like us are the forgotten. We're not the poor, and we're not the rich. We're not the very young or the aged. We're the average American family.

The poor generally follow behavior patterns established by the rich.

This College system went into practice to draw a line of demarcation between the two classes of society—it separated the children of the rich from the children of the poor.

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

I'm not going to do class warfare; I want to be wealthy.

People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents are, and that kind of thing comes out really quick in things like marriage and interpersonal relationships.

I identify with the bottom of the pyramid, because, outside of having money, I am at the bottom of the pyramid.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

Cultivating literature as I do upon a little oatmeal, and driving, when in a position to be driven at all, in that humble vehicle, the 'bus, I have had, perhaps, exceptional opportunities for observing their mutual position and behaviour; and it is very peculiar.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class, and everyone from it I've met, and think they're incredibly witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.

Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.

If there's an enduring theme in my work, it's probably the effects of class on American life.

Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.