Class Inequality Quotes

As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.... On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

In the U.K., working-class lives are depicted with the characters' humour, but in the U.S., people with difficulties are often depicted with pious or simply dreary lives.

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome.

Can we blame an elector of the poorer classes, who has only the choice among two or three rich men, for requiring from the one he votes for a pledge to those measures which he considers as a test of emancipation from the class-interests of the rich?

Capitalists … can grow rich only where there is an oppressed body of labourers

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

One class did not overthrow another; the poor did not supplant the rich. But social relationships—the way people were connected one to another—were changed and decisively so.

It's so wonderful that women continue to break down barriers and change societal expectations, but women still suffer discrimination for their gender, class, and race.

The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.

[Capitalism is] a special machine for the suppression of one class by another.

I was an anomaly because my father was a Harvard man, and he came from a family of poor people.

For the criminal who is weak and poor the narrow cell of death awaits; but honor and glory await the rich who conceal their crimes behind their gold and silver and inherited glory.

How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals.

[Jesus] organized a working class movement ... for no other purpose than to destroy class rule and set up the common people as the sole and rightful inheritors of the earth.

The lower middle classes as well as the peasants, … always side with the strongest

People have to recognise I'm a working-class lad. Forget what I've done and where I've been. I'm a working-class lad. I've come from nothing and I've not forgotten that.

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

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.

I'm writing about the things I see all around me. Growing up in Mississippi, I've seen how these backward ideas about class and race and healthcare and education and housing and racism impact everyday lives. For example, my mother wouldn't let me go to my homecoming dance because the yacht club where they were having the dance threw a fundraiser for David Duke, an ex-Klan member, when he was running for governor of Louisiana. So I grew up seeing how personal politics could be.

The socialism of our day has done good service in setting men to thinking how certain civilizing benefits, now only enjoyed by theopulent, can be enjoyed by all.

So fiercely has the course of modern legislation turned against landowners as to render it merely a question of time, and no long time, when they … shall be broken up. The squirearchy have had long innings; may the new order that is to replace it make our country better for all sorts and conditions of men.

Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?