Working Class Quotes

• The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."

  Harry Bridges

  Class, Unity, Important

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• A working class hero is something to be.

  John Lennon

  Hero, Class, Labor

  "Working Class Hero" (song) (1970)

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• Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.

  Terry Eagleton

  Class, Capitalism

  "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.

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• Once the working classes were in chains, now they're in chain restaurants.

  Will Self

  Class, Restaurants, Chains

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• There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

  John Ruskin

  Strong, Class, Wicked

  John Ruskin (19??). “Ruskin's Works”

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• I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

  Jay Gould

  Class, Political, Half

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• The working classes in every country only learn to fight in the course of their struggles.

  Rosa Luxemburg

  Country, Struggle, Fighting

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• If you are from an ordinary working class family, life is just much harder than many people in politics realise.

  Theresa May

  Class, People, Ordinary

  "Theresa May speech: No snap election, no emergency budget and no rush for Article 50" by Richard Hartley-Parkinson, metro.co.uk. June 30, 2016.

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• I would prefer to use a very inclusive definition of the working class. I'd like to include all of those people who are, if they're not exploited by an immediate employer over them, they're exploited by the system and therefore have a cause to want to change the system. Having a very inclusive definition of the working class creates a great opportunity for organizing people.

  Howard Zinn

  Opportunity, Class, People

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• I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a working class community. There were no miracles in my life, there's nothing miraculous about how I grew up, and I want people to know when they look at me, to be clear that they see what an investment in public education can look like.

  Michelle Obama

  Class, People, Miracle

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Witty, Work

  Quoted in Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions (1916)

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• The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: There is life, but it's not for you.

  John Mortimer

  Children, Good Life, Work

  "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged" by L.M. Boyd, www.sfgate.com. May 13, 1995.

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• My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?'

  Tom Hiddleston

  Strong, Father, Men

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• We're working-class people, which means we don't get rich or have maids. Be content with what you are and what you have.

  Colleen McCullough

  Mean, Class, People

  Colleen McCullough (2013). “The Thorn Birds”, p.22, Head of Zeus

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• I am not a capitalist soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. I do not belong to the regular army of the plutocracy, but to the irregular army of the people. I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary, even to the barricades.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Heart, Fighting

  "In What War Shall I Take Up Arms and Fight?" by Eugene V. Debs, www.marxists.org. September 1915.

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• The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

  Arthur Balfour

  Talking, Years, Class

  1926 Speech in the House of Commons, 7 May.

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• I would have put more emphasis on bringing working class people together to fight for a government that works for all of us.

  Bernie Sanders

  Fighting, People, Together

  Source: info.msnbc.com

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• My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

  Christa McAuliffe

  Class, People, My Sympathy

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• It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

  Barbara Kruger

  Class, People, Support

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• We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.

  George Orwell

  Fear, Struggle, Class

  The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 13

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• If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

  Michael Caine

  Talking, Class, Ideas

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• The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Country, Class, History

  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (2012). “Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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• I am from the working class. I am now what I was then. No amount of balsamic vinegar and Prada handbags could make me forget what it was like to be poor.

  Sue Townsend

  Class, Handbags, Vinegar

  "I didn't know what Adrian Mole looked like - well, not until I saw John Major on the telly". Interview with Alex Clark, www.theguardian.com. November 6, 2009.

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• I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Class, Trouble, Said

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• The working-class is now issuing from its hiding-place to assert an Englishman's heaven-born privilege of doing as he likes, and is beginning to perplex us by marching where it likes, meeting where it likes, bawling what it likes, breaking what it likes.

  Matthew Arnold

  Class, Heaven, Likes

  'Culture and Anarchy' (1869) ch. 3

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