Caste System Quotes

• This caste system had grown by the practice of the son always following the business of the father.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Business, Father, Son

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.3702, Manonmani Publishers

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If education does not create a need for the best in life, then we are stuck in an undemocratic, rigid caste society.

  Sargent Shriver

  Education, Doe, Needs

  89 Copy quote

• I am neither a child, a young man, nor an ancient; nor am I of any caste.

  Guru Nanak

  Children, Men, Ancient

  "Juggling with destiny" by Emma John, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2006.

  140 Copy quote

  Show source

• A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar

  B. R. Ambedkar

  Sweet, Poison, Taste

  119 Copy quote

• I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.

  Saina Nehwal

  Believe, People, Prosperity

  46 Copy quote

• We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

  William Faulkner

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.151, Modern Library

  247 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's one of the biggest losses, I think, to African American families, is that people, once they left, they turned away from the South. They didn't look back, and they often didn't tell their children about it. They didn't want to talk about it. It was too painful, what they'd gone through and the caste system of the South, which was Jim Crow.

  Isabel Wilkerson

  Children, Loss, Thinking

  "Journalist Isabel Wilkerson". "Tavis Smiley", www.pbs.org. December 23, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

  William Faulkner

  Military, Practice, Liberty

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.151, Modern Library

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many immigrants do not talk about what they endured back home. They were fleeing that world, and when they left they didn't want to talk about it because there had been pain and heartbreak under the caste system of the South. They didn't want to burden their children with what they had endured.

  Isabel Wilkerson

  Children, Pain, Home

  7 Copy quote

• The West remains obsessed by the caste system.

  Francois Gautier

  West, Obsession, Obsessed

  29 Copy quote

• Indian leaders are saying, "You don't understand our caste system. It's really a lovely thing. People are very happy about it and so on." I don't think that's quite fair.

  N. T. Wright

  Thinking, People, Leader

  Source: blogs.thegospelcoalition.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The caste system, in all its various forms, is always based on identifiable physical characteristics - sex, color, age.

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  Sex, Color, Racism

  9 Copy quote

• Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mean, Men, America

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2010.

  160 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the social, economic, and political challenges of our time.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Color, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do believe that something akin to a racial caste system is alive and well in America.

  Michelle Alexander

  Believe, America, Alive

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Comics have a caste system - an editor has to act in a certain way, an artist has to be humble.

  Jack Kirby

  Humble, Artist, Editors

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyway, what is a country? When people say, "Tell me about India," I say, "Which India?.... The land of poetry and mad rebellion? The one that produces haunting music and exquisite textiles? The one that invented the caste system and celebrates the genocide of Muslims and Sikhs and the lynching of Dalits? The country of dollar billionaires? Or the one in which 800 million live on less than half-a-dollar a day? Which India?"

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, Lynching, Land

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.

  Jack Kirby

  Humble, Artist, Simple

  Interview with Gary Groth, www.tcj.com. February 1990.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Class certainly loomed large in Katrina's aftermath. Blacks of means escaped the tragedy; blacks without them suffered and died. In reality, it is how race and class interact that made the situation for the poor so horrible on the Gulf Coast. The rigid caste system that punishes poor blacks and other minorities also targets poor whites.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Mean, Reality, Race

  "Come Hell or High Water". Book by Michael Eric Dyson, www.today.com. 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.

  Seamus Heaney

  Class System, Want, Castes

  4 Copy quote

• The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not - as many argue - just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Cities, Justice

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, January 5, 2010.

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of backs back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding 'law and order' rather than 'segregation forever'.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Order, Law

  65 Copy quote

• Musicians and artists are not... it's not like politicians or something where you can't really affect them. There's not like this separate caste system where it's like, "I'm the musician, you're the audience. Never the two shall meet." It was a case where it was like, "Hey, you know what? I'm on your level, man."

  Bradford Cox

  Men, Artist, Two

  Source: pitchfork.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bail out the bankers and bankrupt the school teachers - we will still teachI will never follow the lead of those who exclude the kids who need education the most so that my precious scores will rise. I will never line up with those whose idea of reform is the subtle segregation of the poor and desperate. I want no part of the American caste system.

  John Kuhn

  Teacher, School, Kids

  6 Copy quote

• As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.

  William Winwood Reade

  Fall, Sleep, Men

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.507

  9 Copy quote

  Show source