Alan Watts Quotes

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

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

Most Americans seem to be stuck in the economic strata to which they were born.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to earn their living playing. But what draws people to art and artists is a desire to enjoy the propinquity of play. For it is the very freedom of the imagination. And what else were we born to do, but imagine freely?

Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

If we were second class citizens we'd be driving old Cadillacs and living good. If we were first class we'd be driving a Rolls Royce.

I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?

God made poor woman with no heart, But gave her skill, and tact, and art, And so she lives, and plays her part. We must not blame, but pity her.

An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.

Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.

Middle class was defined by having certain values and only a certain amount of money. But this new middle class seems to have absolutely no values and an unlimited amount of money.

More important than anything else is for Americans to wise up to class warfare demagoguery and reject the politics of envy.

I didn't know how a working-class girl like me could possibly make a living in the art world

I'm from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

Social class means a hell of a lot and upper class people - no matter how well [Franklin ] Roosevelt did - it was stylish to hate him.

[The word class has] been excised from the acceptable political vocabulary, except in the limited usage of right-wingers when they accuse liberals of inciting 'class warfare' - a charge that means it's okay for rich people to vote their economic interests but it's not all right to encourage poor people to do so.

You have to live among rich liberals to understand what they're saying. You'll never believe what they mean by 'middle class.' They mean themselves.

The majority decision constitutionalizes a distinction between a red leather pouch and a paper bag that is necessarily based at least in some part on economic and class differences and perceptions.

In Caribbean there is no middle class: you're either rich or you're poor. And the ladder to success is not really a ladder, it's a chain; once you reach a certain level, you can't go back and you can only keep going forward.

The trajectory of this country [USA] is not positive and particularly for the disadvantaged, as we see what's happening. The gains in productivity have dropped, the gains in income for the middle class and the least advantaged have slowed, at best.

If you're a rich guy, the best thing you can do is demand tax increases on the rich. That way the poor guy will leave you alone. The middle class and the poor will leave you alone.

As long as there's anybody that's poor or middle class, there will not be satisfaction that there are rich people. Not 'til we get rid of all the rich can we say we have finished the job.