Ann Aguirre Quotes

Class defines how real people live. They don’t live the myth. They don’t live the dream. Politics is always about more than what is stated, or what looms before the eye. Even when it’s denied, politicians engage in class issues. The Civil War was a struggle to shore up both a racial and a class hierarchy. The Confederacy was afraid that poor whites would be drawn in by Union appeals and would vote to end slavery—because slavery was principally a reflection of the wealthy planters’ self-interest. Today as well we have a large unbalanced electorate that is regularly convinced to vote against its collective self-interest. These people are told that East Coast college professors brainwash the young and that Hollywood liberals make fun of them and have nothing in common with them and hate America and wish to impose an abhorrent, godless lifestyle. The deceivers offer essentially the same fear-laden message that the majority of southern whites heard when secession was being weighed. Moved by the need for control, for an unchallenged top tier, the power elite in American history has thrived by placating the vulnerable and creating for them a false sense of identification—denying real class differences wherever possible.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don't like connecting with them.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

There shall not be intermarriage between plebeians and patricians

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

All communities divide ... into the few and the many. The 1st are the rich and well-born; the other are the mass of the people [who are] ... turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give, therefore to the 1st class a distinct, permanent share in the government.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

Class has always been Tom Wolfe's subject, and I suspect the reason for much of the disfavor in which he is held.

Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.

I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class.

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

We still retain in Britain a deeper sense of class, a more obvious social stratification, and stronger class resentments, than any of the Scandinavian, Australasian, or North American countries.

PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The very mudsills of society. We call them slaves. But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.