Middle Class Quotes - Page 38

• There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized.

  Zoë Heller

  Class, People, Parent

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• He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.

  Michael Lewis

  Blessed, Class, Mind

  Michael Lewis (2010). “Liar's Poker”, p.263, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Perhaps if the year was 1447 instead of 1947 I might have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Past, Years, Class

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.154, Vintage

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• I was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews.

  Sloane Crosley

  Cat, Thinking, Fire

  Sloane Crosley (2008). “I Was Told There'd Be Cake”, p.15, Penguin

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• Feelings are facts. Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it's what you do about what you feel that matters.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Class, White, Long

  Mary Doria Russell (1996). “The Sparrow”, Random House

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• In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

  Charles Simic

  Children, Divorce, Class

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• To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Class, Easy

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.191, Courier Corporation

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• You gotta be rich to be insane, Hol. Losing your mind is not a luxury for the middle class.

  Cecelia Ahern

  I Love You, Class, Luxury

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• They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Hate, Men

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• I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people. Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us. I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.

  Charlaine Harris

  College, Class, White

  Charlaine Harris (2002). “Living Dead in Dallas: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.118, Penguin

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• The [Booker] prize was actually responsible in many ways for my political activism. I won this thing and I was suddenly the darling of the new emerging Indian middle class – they needed a princess. They had the wrong woman. I had this light shining on me at the time, and I knew that I had the stage to say something about what was happening in my country. What is exciting about what I have done since is that writing has become a weapon, some kind of ammunition.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, Princess, Writing

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• If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

  Joe Bageant

  Exercise, Doors, Class

  Joe Bageant (2008). “Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War”, p.173, Broadway Books

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• I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

  Jack Kerouac

  Life, Stars, Philosophy

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• The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Class, America

  Michael Lewis (2015). “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (movie tie-in)”, p.88, W. W. Norton & Company

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• They always believe that 'things are in a bad way now,' but they 'haven't any faith in these idealists.' One minute they call Wilson 'just a dreamer, not practical'- a year later they rail at him for making his dreams realities. They haven't clear logical ideas on one single subject except a sturdy, stolid opposition to all change. They don't think uneducated people should be highly paid, but they won't see that if they don't pay the uneducated people their children are going to be uneducated too, and we're going round and round in a circle. That- is the great middle class.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Children, Believe

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “Three Novels: Tender is the Night; The Beautiful and Damned; Thi”, p.996, Simon and Schuster

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• To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.

  Tennessee Williams

  School, Eye, Class

  Tennessee Williams (1945). “The Glass Menagerie”, p.5, New Directions Publishing

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• The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.

  Tim Ferriss

  Inspirational, Years, Class

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• Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi's and Nikes, grab their caps and backpacks, and Sony personal CD players and head for school.

  Naomi Klein

  Nike, Morning, School

  Naomi Klein (2009). “No Logo”, p.119, Macmillan

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• Stuff Happens.’ That’s the G-rated version. That’s a bumper sticker that only a straight white upper middle class male could have made. Because anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who isn’t male, anyone who isn’t white, anyone who isn’t upper middle class knows that stuff doesn’t just happen. Stuff gets done by people to people. Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing is random. This isn’t osmosis. And so we act as if it’s this passive thing, but yet that’s not the case.

  Tim Wise

  Osmosis, Class, White

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• I realized that all my life, my values were based upon typical middle-class American values: hard work, doing good, living well, owning things, following the rules & being the best I can be... but God clearly says, "those are not MY values. I value justice, mercy & humility.

  John Green

  Humility, Hard Work, Class

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• In general, I think what Donald Trump's message is, is: I'm a very practical, execution-oriented entrepreneur who built a successful business. I've demonstrated an ability to go global with my business. I can get along with a lot of different people. There are certain problems in the United States right now born from faulty policy. So what is happening right now is the lower and middle class are being left behind by the globalization and by the global elite. I think that's basically his message, and Bernie Sanders' is similar.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Successful, Thinking, Class

  Source: gawker.com

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• I think what Donald Trump is saying to people is that America has way more leverage at the negotiating table than America has used in the past. And whether you like it or not, the government and trade representatives have made the decision not to use that leverage. And it has had an economic impact on the lower and middle class.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Past, Thinking, Impact

  Source: gawker.com

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• What has worked for America is not caring about how the rich are doing, or the politics of envy. What's worked for America is growth. Growth is the reason why I had a very nice middle class upbringing with parents who never went to college.

  Anthony Scaramucci

  Nice, Caring, College

  Source: gawker.com

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• We're the highest taxed nation in the world. Our middle class is just reeling from the taxes. And you know, if you think about it, the middle class and the workers of this country, who really built the country, they haven't had a raise in 12 years. They're making less now actually - to be even worse about it, they're making less now than they did 12 years ago.

  Donald Trump

  Country, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• What I do believe absolutely is that in the middle of a recession, the American middle class and working class needs a tax relief.

  Bernie Sanders

  Believe, Class, Relief

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

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