Bourgeoisie Quotes - Page 3

• It is the bourgeoisie which has turned religion into an opium of the people by preaching a God, lord of the heavens only, while taking possession of the earth for itself.

  Frei Betto

  People, Heaven, Earth

  9 Copy quote

• I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.

  George Orwell

  Fighting, Men, Class

  "The Road to Wigan Pier". Book by George Orwell (Diary 6-10 February), March 8, 1937.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marx's Kapital is not a treatise on socialism; it is a gerrymand against the bourgeoisie. It was supposed to be written for the working class, but the working man respects the bourgeoisie and wants to be a bourgeoisie. Marx never got a hold of him for a moment. It was the revolting sons of the bourgeoisie itself, like myself, that painted the flag red. The middle and upper classes are the revolutionary element in society. The proletariat is the conservative element.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Son, Men, Class

  283 Copy quote

• Once you get past the grand normative claims made in the West for literature, especially the novel, in the post-Christian era - that it is a secular substitute for religion, hallmark of modern civilization, a priori liberal and cosmopolitan, with authors appearing to implicitly embody such pious ideals - you encounter a less agreeable reality: parochialism, blinkered views, even racial prejudices of the kind the bourgeoisie have held everywhere.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Christian, Past, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.

  Karl Marx

  Country, Character, Feet

  4 Copy quote

• The bourgeoisie's weapon is starvation. If as a writer or artist you run counter to their narrow notions they simplyand silently withdraw your means of subsistence. I sometimes wonder how many people of talent are executed in this way every year.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Running, Mean, Artist

  Quoted by Lloyd Osbourne in 'The Death of Stevenson', preface To Tusitala edition of Weir of Hermiston (published 1924).

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

  Talcott Parsons

  Materialism, Ends, Idealism

  Max Weber, Talcott Parsons (2003). “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, p.3, Courier Corporation

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Political, Republic, Communism

  Vladimir Il'ich Lenin (1975). “Izbrannye Proizvedenii͡a V Trekh Tomakh”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bourgeoisie are the only people who want to help me. The enlightened bourgeoisie are the only ones who ever buy anything, look after it, and don't ask for a discount. They want to look after you.

  Liam Gillick

  People, Looks, Want

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Communist Manifesto was correct but we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding to democratic organizations. In my judgment success lies in a steady [peaceful] advance [rather] than in a catastrophic crash.

  Eduard Bernstein

  Success, Peace, Lying

  55 Copy quote

• Hitler did not have Mussolini's revolutionary socialist background... Nevertheless, he shared the socialist hatred and contempt for the 'bourgeoisie' and 'capitalism' and exploited for his purposes the powerful socialist traditions of Germany. The adjectives 'socialist' and 'worker' in the official name of Hitler's party ('The Nationalist-Socialist German Workers' Party') had not merely propagandistic value... On one occasion, in the midst of World War II, Hitler even declared that 'basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same.'

  Richard Pipes

  Powerful, War, Party

  "Property and Freedom". Book by Richard Pipes, 1999.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't agree that what we're seeing is a matter of the American bourgeoisie confronting workers everywhere. It's more like the international plutocracy eliminating the American middle class while inadvertently creating a bourgeoisie in India, China, etc. I do agree that Soros's role is paradoxical, but if all billionaires (or even a few more) were like Soros, the dialectic would give us global social democracy PDQ.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Creating, Class, Giving

  Source: www.newyorker.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the various stages of development which the struggle of working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

  Karl Marx

  Struggle, Class, Movement

  BookCaps, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (2012). “The Communist Manifesto in Plain and Simple English”, p.52, BookCaps Study Guides

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• [W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. ... We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.

  Adolf Hitler

  Order, Broken, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, posses however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other.

  Karl Marx

  Class, Two, Splitting Up

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Philip Gasper (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.40, Haymarket Books

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we are headed for is a sort of social structure in which the highbrows are the elite, the middlebrows are the bourgeoisie and the lowbrows are hoi polloi.

  Russell Lynes

  Art, Social, Structure

  Russell Lynes (1966). “Confessions of a dilettante”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Party, Struggle, Europe

  12 Copy quote

• People think that the art market is about opportunists and hedge-fund managers getting broken art, but what really happened is that there was a new configuration of bourgeois values in the U.S. and an acceptance among the bourgeoisie of contemporary art as an idea. I think that bourgeois people are horrible.

  Liam Gillick

  Art, Acceptance, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is something false in this search for a purely feminine writing style. Language, such as it is, is inherited from a masculine society, and it contains many male prejudices. We must rid language of all that. Still, a language is not something created artificially; the proletariat can't use a different language from the bourgeoisie, even if they use it differently, even if from time to time they invent something, technical words or even a kind of worker's slang, which can be very beautiful and very rich. Women can do that as well, enrich their language, clean it up.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Beautiful, Writing, Style

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Thinking, Speak, Comfortable

  4 Copy quote

• Middle class people, the bourgeoisie, they are also feeling frightened at the moment. Some fear losing their fortunes; some go bankrupt; some are thinking about suicide. They don't know if they will retain the beautiful house that they bought, or what will happen to the five family cars.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Beautiful, Suicide, Thinking

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.

  Allen W. Wood

  Vision, Way, Firsts

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the efforts of one country are sufficient - for this we have the testimony of the history of our revolution. For the definitive victory of Socialism, for the organization of Socialist production, the efforts of one country, especially of a peasant country like Russia, are insufficient - for that are required the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries.

  Leon Trotsky

  Country, Russia, Organization

  Source: www.marxists.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• To overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to establish the power of the proletariat in one country still does not signify the full victory of Socialism.

  Leon Trotsky

  Country, Victory, Doe

  Source: www.marxists.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.

  Karl Marx

  Revenge, Class, Sight

  Karl Marx, Frederick Engels (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.36, Haymarket Books

  19 Copy quote

  Show source