John Lennon Quotes

Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously those who supported the social order and those who wished to overthrow it... .

'The Tube' was the first time the plebs had gone on the television. The lunatics taking over the asylum.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

Subordinate classes have usually pushed for democracy, dominant classes nearly always have resisted it.

Fear of the consequences of the masses’ indignation often induces the class holding parliamentary power to make concessions which the masses would not otherwise have obtained

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

All past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.

I always looked at rock & roll as the voice of regular people, of an economic group not in charge.

To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

The middle has not enough class that I think about the middle class.

There is no alternative to class struggle.

These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

The ruling class is smarter than you, and they're more creative. And if you forget that lesson, you go down the drain. Because if they weren't, they wouldn't be around as long as they have been and as strong as they have been.

Everywhere, authority and tradition have to justify themselves in the face of questions.

It's usually human drama that carries with it issues of race or class that attracts me. That was certainly the case with 'No Crossover.'

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.