23 Quotes About Middle Class

The middle class is the middle way between the poor and rich. The term may also refer to the social classes in the United States that are between the upper-class and working class. It is a region of the American social class system which has come to be known as "middle class." People generally consider themselves middle-class if they do not fall below the poverty line, which is defined by living on less than two times their income.

In general, poor is polite and rich is rude.
1
In general, poor is polite and rich is rude. Amit Kalantri
The middle class were invented to give the poor hope;...
2
The middle class were invented to give the poor hope; the poor, to make the rich feel special; the rich, to humble the middle class. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
3
We are the bourgeoisie–the third estate, as they call us now–and what we want is a nobility of merit, nothing more. We don't recognize this lazy nobility we now have, we reject our present class hierarchy. We want all men to be free and equal, for no one to be someone else's subject, but for all to be subject to the law. There should be an end of privileges and arbitrary power. Everyone should be treated equally as a child of the state, and just as there are no longer any middlemen between the layman and his God, so each citizen should stand in direct relation to the state. We want freedom of the press, of employment, of commerce. We want all men to compete without any special privileges, and the only crown should be the crown of merit. . Thomas Mann
4
As the wicked flee when none pursueth, so does the middle-class wrestle when none contendeth. They cried out for freedom, it came down on them in a flood. Nothing remains but a few floating timbers of psychotherapy. Saul Bellow
5
Watching middle-class conservatives vote for politicians who've proudly pledged to screw them and their children over fills me with the same exasperated contempt I feel for rabbits who zigzag wildly back and forth in front of my tires instead of just getting off the goddamn road. Tim Kreider
6
Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within. Vivek Shanbhag
7
Rich or poor, money rules with an iron fist. Unknown
8
... she exclaimed, the innate respectability of the middle-class housewife rising impulsively to the surface through the acquired dilettantism of the 'light woman.' People who enjoyed 'picking-up' things, who admired poetry, despised sordid calculations of profit and loss, and nourished ideals of honour and love, she placed in a class by themselves, superior to the rest of humanity. Marcel Proust
9
In this century, the Australian Century, Australia will also have an opportunity to achieve extraordinary feats. Just as the United States dominates world affairs with less than five per cent of the global population, Australia too can make a lasting impression with its own limited demographics. The rise of the global middle class is Australia’s pathway to exceptionalism. Asher Judah
10
The vast majority of Americans, at all coordinates of the economic spectrum, consider themselves middle class; this is a deeply ingrained, distinctly American cognitive dissonance. Ellen Cushing
11
A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful. Robert B. Reich
12
When you have no choice, you have no discontent either. Vivek Shanbhag
13
The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960. Charles Murray
14
- What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and what is it? Float on flowery beds of ease? Think Man was just made to be happy?- Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for! - Well, we know not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a.. well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?- Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun. Sinclair Lewis
15
It was a cultural revolution, and was not directed at instituting economic changes. He could thus appeal to old prejudices without threatening the existing economic system. This appealed, above all, to white-collar workers and the small entrepreneurs, as some of the statistics presented in this book will demonstrate. It was their kind of revolution: the ideology would give them a new status, free them from isolation in the industrial society, and give them a purpose in life. But it would not threaten any of their vested interests; indeed it would reinforce their bourgeois predilections toward family..and restore the 'good old values' which had been so sadly dismantled by modernity. George L. Mosse
16
Hunger justifies the middle classes. Julien Torma
17
By adherence to a special set of rules, the child of the shabby-genteel can sometimes leap across the time which has passed by his family and function in the real world without doing violence to the hopes his mother held out for him. But those who cannot live within this pattern are the freaks and poets, and they travel a different road to peace. Murray Kempton
18
The rich and the poor truly are from different realms: one has adapted to become an expert in material forfeit; the other has forfeited all they are to material, and thus is enslaved, by it. Unknown
19
Illiteracy is the innability of a person to learn. It is not all about the innability to read or write as the middle class regards it. Paul Bamikole
20
This advice comes as a surprise: job searching is not joblessness; it is a job in itself and should be structured to resemble one, right down to the more regrettable features of employment, like having to follow orders--orders which are in this case self-generated. Barbara Ehrenreich
21
It’s time someone said it, average living (read middle-class) is not good enough Mark Maish
22
It was only after the Grimms published two editions primarily for adults that they changed their attitude and decided to produce a shorter edition for middle-class families. This led to Wilhelm's editing and censoring many of the tales. Jack Zipes