Simone Elkeles Quotes

Class is a way of looking at society that divides people into different categories based on how much money they're willing to make.

The ground is the symbol for the poor people; the poor people is gonna open up this whole world and swallow up the rich people. It's gonna be like - there might be some cannibalism out this mother. They might eat the rich.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot of people who live below the poverty level and have for a long time and it makes them uneasy to think they'll have to interact with people from different economic levels. Everyone has some sort of load put on them, whatever the circumstances they're born into.

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.

The only people who really worry about money are the very poor and the very rich.

The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else,and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.

Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

I was very sad for many days when I discovered that in the world there were poor people and rich people; and the strange thing is that the existence of the poor did not cause me as much pain as the knowledge that at the same time there were people who were rich.

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

When I was a child, I didn't fly - we couldn't afford to fly. Flying was for rich people.

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

I'm not from the working class. I'm from the criminal class.

You can't define what's middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor.

The poor generally follow behavior patterns established by the rich.

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer.

With upper- and middle-class lawns, there's more hidden, whereas with working-class or poor lawns, there's more out to see. It just sits right out there. Very honest. Like the people.

I've always felt like a lot of people's misconceptions of me have to do with how I grew up. I grew up poor, and I grew up rich.

A good many causes tend to make good masters and mistresses quite as rare as good servants.... The large and rapid fortunes by which vulgar and ignorant people become possessed of splendid houses, splendidly furnished, do not, of course, give them the feelings and manners of gentle folks, or in any way really raise them above the servants they employ, who are quite aware of this fact, and that the possession of wealth is literally the only superiority their employers have over them.

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

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?

Poor people have big TV's. Rich people have big libraries.

Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it.

There are rich people, and there are those who have money. They are not the same people.

There are more differences between poor people than between middle-class people.