Edmund Burke Quotes

… the submerged tenth

It has been the purpose of the ruling class, apparently, to build new barriers between themselves and the common people, rather than tear away any of those already existing. I think no one can understand the actual condition of the mass of whites in Georgia and the Carolinas, except by some daily contact with them. The injustice done to three fourths of them was hardly less than that done to all the blacks.... Nine of every ten white men in South Carolina had almost as little to do with even State affairs as the negroes had.

I am a coolie and the son of a coolie. I was born with the poor, and I am still poor. My sympathies have always been with the struggling mass.

We were kinda rebels. From the wrong side of the tracks. Down where we were raised, it was a tough town.

I've always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots, maybe because that's who I was.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

Most of my characters aren't hillbillies anyway. Let's just call them proletariat with a disposition towards criminal activity.

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

A poor man is a man who has not got much money. This may seem a simple and unnecessary description, but in the face of a great mass of modern fact and fiction, it seems very necessary indeed; most of our realists and sociologists talk about a poor man as if he were an octopus or an alligator.

There was no pity take of the poor people, who wrought never no manner of treason, yet they bought it dearer than the great personages, such as had done the evil and trespass

The English proletariat lives under such wretched conditions that a few extra privations will not cause it much discomfort.

While the politicians fight for place and power, what of the destinies of the common people, in whose name and for whose alleged benefit the contending factions appeal to the world at large?

I have a great fear of the atrociousness of proletarian rule.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

The extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery which are so prevalent among the laboring classes in many countries are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of education.

The laboring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present necessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.

I come from the lower middle class, originally. We didn't have anything.

Christ didn't choose the rich to preach the doctrine; he choose 12 poor ignorant workers - that is, he chose the proletariat of the times.

I come from a lower-middle-class family and used to stay in a housing board colony.

I came from the most humble side of society, and I know what it's like to be poor, really poor, and I was brought up in the '60s and '70s very poor, and I'm very happy flying the flag for the working man.

I was brought up on a council estate. I know what it's like to be poor.

All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they're in the same boat. They've got no economic opportunities.

My family has been poor and working-class for generations. And we live - I live in this really small community in Southern Mississippi where you don't evacuate, and you have never evacuated because there are too many people in your family to evacuate.

I understand the pain of working-class Americans because I have experienced the pain.