They had far more in common than either realised. One was born Catholic, the other Protestant. One was born Irish, the other British. But neither was the greatest difference between them. One was born rich and the other poor.
Joseph O'ConnorTags: class-division social-class
Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has a point, it is the desire of one individual to see the idea of confrontation kept alive.
Christopher HitchensTags: politics united-states oscar-wilde england the-importance-of-being-earnest confrontation united-kingdom margaret-thatcher ronald-reagan social-class political-radicalism social-structure-of-the-uk
Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the idiotic sneer that such principles are 'fashionable,' it is always the ideas of secularism, libertarianism, internationalism, and solidarity that stand in need of reaffirmation.
Christopher HitchensTags: politics religion atheism albert-einstein secularism libertarianism internationalism social-class
In effect, nobody who is not from the losing classes has ever been thrust into a death cell in these United States.
Christopher HitchensTags: united-states 1998 capital-punishment social-class capital-punishment-in-the-us
The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.
Charles MooreTags: politics wealth freedom democracy capitalism economics media banks labour united-kingdom 2011 economic-inequality social-class rupert-murdoch
The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.
George OrwellTags: despair poverty hopelessness england trains slums social-class 1930s plumbing
It lies like a leper in purple, it sits like a dead thing smeared with gold.
Oscar WildeTags: appearance social-class woman-of-no-importance
In the privacy of my dreams, I'm a warrior.
Kimberly DertingTags: soul fantasy rulers queens kings ability social-class
Do you think me, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless?
Charlotte BrontëTags: inspirational courageous social-class
HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
Tags: morals poverty social-class
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