Middle Class Quotes - Page 11

• The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to do.

  George Orwell

  Class, Wipe, Tendencies

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.276, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The second reason why we haven't observed the growing gap is that our historical and social science analyses have concentrated on what has been happening within the 'middle classes' - that is, to that ten to fifteen percent of the population of the world-economy who consumed more surplus than they themselves produced. Within this sector there really has been a relatively dramatic flattening of the curve between the very top (less than one percent of the total population) and the truly 'middle' segments, or cadres (the rest of the ten to fifteen percent).

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Curves, Class, Historical

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• There is an alternative to terror. It is called, in the political order, democracy. In the economic order, it is called the dynamic enterprise economy. (...) It empowers poor people from the bottom up. (...) A dynamic economic sector is the poor's best hope of escaping the prison of poverty. It is the only system so far known to human beings to take poor people and make them, quite soon, middle class, and some of them even (horrors!) rich.

  Michael Novak

  Escaping, Order, Class

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• I have never experienced racism in the feminist movement, so it concerned me to think that I was unable to see the subject clearly because I came from white, middle-class privilege.

  Betty Buckley

  Thinking, Class, White

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• I think the ultimate challenge is to have some kind of style and grace, even though you haven't got money, or standing in society, or formal education. I had a very middle, lower-middle class sort of upbringing, but I identify with people who've had, at some point in their lives to struggle to survive. It adds another color to your character.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Struggle, Character, Thinking

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• In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Wall, Hard Work

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• I didn't plan to be the rude middle-class comedian. You write a certain type of joke that you find funny, and mine happen to be often rude. Yes, it's juvenile, but that's me.

  Jimmy Carr

  Writing, Class, Rude

  "The boy behind the man". Interview with Will Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. December 2, 2004.

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• I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.

  Dennis Hopper

  Photography, Fun, Artist

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way.

  Peter Jurasik

  Sweet, New York, Class

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. November 18, 2002.

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• We will lower the tax burden on middle class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate.

  William J. Clinton

  Children, Class, Choices

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• I'm Bill Clinton and I think you deserve a change. That's why I've offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut.

  William J. Clinton

  Moving, Cutting, Thinking

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• From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle class tax cut. I never did meet any voter who thought that.

  William J. Clinton

  Cutting, Race, Class

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• Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.

  Arianna Huffington

  Stay Strong, Games, Class

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• It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.

  Arianna Huffington

  Exaggeration Is, Class, Middle

  Arianna Huffington (2010). “Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream”, p.4, Broadway Books

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• In California, the fabulously rich support the poor with government jobs, paid for by the middle class which is now living in Arizona.

  Ann Coulter

  Jobs, Government, Class

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• Mark Kirk: Lied about going to war. Opposed middle class tax cuts. And said unemployment's not that big an issue.

  Alexi Giannoulias

  War, Cutting, Class

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• Call me an over anxious, middle-class mum, but my eight-and-a-half-year old son looks very much, to me, like he's headed for a life of crime.

  Arabella Weir

  Son, Years, Class

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• I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth.

  George W. Bush

  Humor, Thinking, Class

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• I was born in a poor family, a lower middle class family. My father was a clerk in the forest department. I was very bad at studies. I was not very good at sports, also.

  Anupam Kher

  Sports, Father, Class

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• The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Government, Views, Class

  The Guardian, May 23, 1992.

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• In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists [sic], one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails.

  Margaret Sanger

  Writing, Class, Ideas

  Margaret Sanger, Michael W. Perry, H. G. Wells (2003). “The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic”, p.369, Inkling Books

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• Such an assemblage of the spraddle-legged men of the middle class, whose hands were bent and shoulders stooped from delving and constructing, had never appeared to an Asbury Park summer crowd, and the latter was vaguely amused.

  Stephen Crane

  Summer, Men, Hands

  Stephen Crane (1984). “Prose and Poetry”, p.463, Library of America

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• You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.

  John le Carre

  Dirty, Mean, Boys

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• The number one job facing the middle class. And it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S.

  Joe Biden

  Jobs, Stupid, Class

  "Let's talk about Joe Biden" by Mark Goldblatt, www.nationalreview.com. October 28, 2008.

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• Liberals state that many teenagers would rather sell crack for $100 an hour than to flip hamburgers for a minimum wage. Using the same liberal logic, you might think it would make more sense for the average middle-class worker to rob banks rather than work a forty-hour week? The reason why most people, rich and poor, do not commit crimes because they know it is wrong to do so.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Work, Teenager, Thinking

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