Irvine Welsh Quotes

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.

I think we've made tremendous progress on racism. We've even made progress on war. We've made almost no progress on poverty.

Solidarity forever …. We stand outcast and starving from the wonders we have made.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

The class war is over.

I feel sympathy for the working class lad. I've always championed about ticket prices and try to equate that to people's salaries.

Life is now a war zone, and as such, the number of people considered disposable has grown exponentially, and this includes low income whites, poor minorities, immigrants, the unemployed, the homeless, and a range of people who are viewed as a liability to capital and its endless predatory quest for power and profits.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

I want to wage war against illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, unfair competition, communitarianism, delinquency.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

Half the world does not know how the other half lives.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

Deep persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise …. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

Poor whites have been pitted against poor blacks to assuage the conscience of the affluent.

Ninety percent of the racial debate is really about economics.

In the last era of the [civil rights] movement, the disenfranchised were the blacks, the colored. Now the disenfranchised are the have-nots, the unemployed, the hungry.

Labor in white skin cannot be free so long as labor in a black skin is branded.

Poor men's words have little weight.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it.

It is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists … poverty is slavery!

Inequality is bad for everyone, not just the middle class and the poor.