Middle Class People Quotes

#1. In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.

Angela Davis

#2. I noticed, rich people never toss away their pennies in their driveways, middle-class always chuck them there, and stray dogs lick up what little pennies they find on poverty ground.

Anthony Liccione

#3. Young people deserve stable employment opportunities and not mountains of debt. When young people can access the middle class, America is strengthened.

Patrick Murphy

#4. The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world - to be accepted.

Brian Grazer

#5. Wealthy people are often criticized for being obsessed with money, but the truth is, it's the poor, working, and middle class that spend the most time thinking about it.

Steve Siebold

#6. I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#7. Educational opportunities have supported the rise of the African middle class, the professional cadre of young people who are now willing and able to contribute to Africa's future prosperity.

Mo Ibrahim

#8. Particularly with middle-class people, self-absorption is a struggle.

Ben Lewin

#9. You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

Damian Lewis

#10. I think we always view people who make us feel uncomfortable and appear to intrude on our middle-class cozy space, we view them with, if not hostility, at least suspicion, discomfort, embarrassment.

Ian Anderson

#11. Millions of people are falling out of the middle class into the ranks of the poor.

Simon Mainwaring

#12. Rural Americans want leaders who help middle-class communities to plan and prosper over the long-term - not opportunists who reap the rewards for themselves, leaving nothing for the people who do the sowing.

Tom Vilsack

#13. The difference between people isn't in their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets ideas, and from the common people
life itself, warmth. You feel their hates and loves.

D.H. Lawrence

#14. I do believe that we should substantially lower student debt in this country, which is crushing millions of people. We pay for it, in my view, by a tax on Wall Street speculation. The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need. Now, it is Wall Street's time to help the middle class.

Bernie Sanders

#15. In a word, a concert hall is a place where middle-class white people can feel safe together.

Christopher Small

#16. We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago.

Henry Hampton

#17. White middle- and upper-class men have a longer journey to go than many people.

Holly Near

#18. The library is full of stories of supposed triumphs which makes me very suspicious of it. It's misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm

Kurt Vonnegut

#19. The Populist Caucus aims to bring people together around middle class issues, so we can tolerate a little difference of opinion.

Bruce Braley

#20. Rich people acquire assets. The poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets,

Robert Kiyosaki

#21. If any writer thinks the world is full of middle class people of nice sensibilities, then he is out of his mind.

Bill Vaughan

#22. I get upset when so many people say there are all sorts of problems in Africa and India where they have these big families. They don't realize that 10 children in rural Tanzania will use less natural resources in a year than one middle class American child. People don't think like that.

Jane Goodall

#23. I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

James Ellroy

#24. The reality is that we have one of lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth because so many people have given up on the political process. The reality is that there has been trillions of dollars of wealth going from the middle class in the last 30 years to the top 1/10th of 1 percent.

Bernie Sanders

#25. They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were.

E. M. Forster

#26. Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities.

Marina Warner

#27. The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.

Eric Ries

#28. In the Communist period, the revolutionaries, the leaders were almost always - Che Guevara, people like that - they were always from the middle class and the educated. And empathy is a very powerful emotion.

Hamza Yusuf

#29. The Eugenic Society ... is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.

Bertrand Russell

#30. If they are ignored, [Alice] Callaghan worries, the dangers of handing the streets over to private security forces will only grow. 'Until they begin interfering with the rights of middle-class people,' she says, 'you won't have anybody crying about it. But by then, it will be too late.'

Ben Ehrenreich

#31. 'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.

Elizabeth Warren

#32. People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.

Brian Friel

#33. The interesting thing about Georgia is, Atlanta is teeming with middle-class black people and black people with money - and yet there is still segregation.

Richard Benjamin

#34. Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

Mitt Romney

#35. One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.

Orhan Pamuk

#36. Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still afford. Above all, it isn't a mass medium: Live theater is a small-scale, handmade art form. Intimacy is what makes it special.

Terry Teachout

#37. For me the Koenigsberg longshoremen had beauty; the Polish jimkes on their grain ships had beauty; the broad freedom of movement in the gestures of the common people had beauty. Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all.

Kathe Kollwitz

#38. I turned a lot of people in white America - and not just white America, but middle-class America - into hip-hoppers, you know?

Vanilla Ice

#39. The bad news in our most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities is that many middle-class people can no longer afford to live in 'middle-class' school districts.

Sandra Tsing Loh

#40. Do what is best for most people, not just a few. Prevent your elites and growing middle class, those who often benefit most from growth and development, from turning into a special interests group that blocks reforms.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

#41. I'll go anywhere and I'll do whatever it takes to get this done. It's too important for Washington to screw this up. Now's the time for us to work on what we all agree to, which is let's keep middle-class taxes low. That's what our economy needs. That's what the American people deserve.

Barack Obama

#42. People expect girls from good middle-class families to be smart
but what they mean by smart for a girl is to have nice handwriting and a neat locker and to do her homework on time. They don't expect ideas or much in the way of real thought.

Adelle Waldman

#43. Look at the [Bill] Clinton Administration and now the [Barack] Obama administration more recently. What we believe is that we implement policies that help people reach the middle class which is the cornerstone of our economy.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

#44. Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.

Tadashi Yanai

#45. Certain authors, speaking of their works, say: "My book," "My commentary," "My history," etc. They resemble middle-class people who have a house of their own and always have "My house" on their tongue.

Blaise Pascal

#46. I didn't say one negative word about poor people or about middle-class people or anything else. All I said was that the rich deserve our gratitude.

Bernard Goldberg

#47. These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you'll find that there's mostly working-class people.

Kevin Ayers

#48. Despite the situation in Cuba, I had a chance to play on the national team; and compared to other baseball players and other people in Cuba, I had the opportunity to live at a level that was not very high class but in the middle.

Yoenis Cespedes

#49. It is true that rich people can spend more money than middle class people, but there's this upper limit on what we can spend. I drive a very nice car, but it's only one car. I don't own a thousand, even though I earn a thousand times the median wage. I have a few jackets, not a few thousand.

Nick Hanauer

#50. There are a lot of people walking around with long hair now and some trendy middle class kids in pretty clothes. But nothing changed except that we all dressed up a bit, leaving the same bastards running everything.

John Lennon

#51. I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. What people don't realize is that my father was a multimillionaire who owned 12 hotels, motels, a steel mill, a radio station, a club, nursing home, and a law office. So I think it's safe to say I'm a little above middle class and I'm a daddy's girl.

LisaRaye McCoy-Misick

#52. Rich people believe "You can have your cake and eat it too." Middle-class people believe "Cake is too rich, so I'll only have a little piece." Poor people don't believe they deserve cake, so they order a doughnut, focus on the hole, and wonder why they have "nothing."

T. Harv Eker

#53. I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.

Abdallah II Of Jordan

#54. 70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

Marco Rubio

#55. You've seen my statements; I do very well. I don't mind paying some taxes. The middle class is getting clobbered in this country. You know the middle class built this country, not the hedge fund guys, but I know people in hedge funds that pay almost nothing, and it's ridiculous, OK?

Donald Trump

#56. In the 'Garnethill' trilogy, people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law, but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

Denise Mina

#57. In real life there are indeed black people who have been in the middle class for generations, but in entertainment it's as if they don't exist.

Stephen Carter

#58. I went to elementary school in L.A. I was born in L.A. My mother was from Redondo Beach. My father was French. He died six months before I was born, so my mother went home. I was born there. Not the childhood that most people think. Middle-class, raised by my mother. Single mom.

Philippe Cousteau Jr.

#59. The change in rhetoric has constituted a revolution in how people view themselves and how they view the middle class, the Bourgeois Revaluation. People have become tolerant of markets and innovation.

Deirdre N. McCloskey

#60. I talked to lots of people who are vaccine-hesitant, and I actually was one myself until I got further into this project, and most of them actually are in my demographic: so well-educated people with advanced degrees who are upper middle-class and have read quite a bit on the subject.

Eula Biss

#61. I'm not anti-middle-class in the slightest. Look at me! I am very pro people putting time and money and effort into trying to improve the world.

J.K. Rowling

#62. I refuse to accept any approach that isn't balanced. I'm not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the entire deficit, while people like me, making over $250,000, aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes.

Barack Obama

#63. I probably don't make as much money as people think I make. I make more than the usual medium household. I'm one of the few middle class actors out there. The microcosm of Hollywood reflects the macrocosm of international finance.

James Ransone

#64. I think satire is a luxury of literate middle-class people. People who are well fed and relatively secure in their beds can laugh at their troubles. They can enjoy sitcoms. For those who aren't quite so lucky, well, the irony might be lost on them.

Harold Ramis

#65. People talk of "class selfishness". Well, I know something of history, and I never heard of any tyrant, aristocrat, capitalist, slave-holder, buccaneer, middle-class shopkeeper - so absolutely and exclusively governed by selfishness as Trades Union "labour".

George Saintsbury

#66. I was fed up with the situation I found myself in in the 1960s. I didn't like being a barrister's wife and going out to dinner with other professional people and dealing with middle class life. It seemed claustrophobic.

Caryl Churchill

#67. It was expected of all good middle-class Indian people to build India and, as you know, Indians - when we say, 'build India,' it was all about being an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer. So it was this idea that professionals would build the country.

Shekhar Kapur

#68. I am not somebody who just says let's beat up on the bad guys. No. I want to summon the good guys and give people the incentives and opportunities to actually grow this economy, put more people to work, get the middle class really feeling like they're back in business.

Hillary Clinton

#69. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.

Nick Hanauer

#70. When my father was a young actor, it is absolutely true that the vast majority were fairly middle class. Then all of a sudden, people like Albert Finney burst through and turned all that on its head.

Jack Davenport

#71. I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.

Denise Mina

#72. Rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first.

Robert Kiyosaki

#73. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty with the creation of robust middle classes in India and China, which is an enormously positive development for those countries that also creates opportunities for the rest of the world.

Dan Quayle

#74. It's so easy for anyone to deal with their own guilt of being a middle-class white music fan by pointing to other people who they perceive to be richer than them, whiter than them.

Ezra Koenig

#75. People feel these job-killing trade agreements have really squeezed the middle class and caused lots of people to lose their middle-class status.

Sherrod Brown

#76. Millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. The very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. But nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. And it's time we just ask.

Joe Biden

#77. When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

Jonathan Lethem

#78. We need to make sure middle-class people are able to pay the bills. We need to make sure that poor people don't starve. Those are values, too.

Chuck Schumer

#79. Canada was settled, in the main, by people with a lower middle-class outlook, and a respect, rather than an affectionate familiarity, for the things of the mind.

Robertson Davies

#80. Poor and most middle-class people believe "If I have a lot of money, I could do what I want and I'd be a success." Rich people understand, "If I become a successful person, I will be able to do what I need to do to have what I want, including a lot of money."

T. Harv Eker

#81. People like to focus on a narrow stereotype, like if we didn't have football then we wouldn't have made it, ... The reality is, there are a lot of football players like me who came out of the middle class.

Jonathan Vilma

#82. I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

V.S. Naipaul

#83. The adivasi people have a long and courageous history of resistance that predates the birth of Maoism. To look upon them as brainless puppets being manipulated by a few middle-class Maoist ideologues is to do them something of a disservice.

Arundhati Roy

#84. Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.

Alexander Skarsgard

#85. It may not be replicable: One of the hardest transition that a developing country can make is the transition to middle-class status. Governments have to let go, people start insisting on following their own lights, etc.

Charles R. Morris

#86. England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.

Stephen Daldry

#87. It took me a while to figure it out, but to have a real hit on Broadway, you have to get the respected Broadway people to like it. But then the production also has to appeal to the most middle-class people who know nothing about Broadway and who come to see it later.

John Waters

#88. If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

Warren Buffett

#89. The issues that matter to me are the social safety nets for people, health care, middle-class concerns. We need to take care of the middle class and the poor in our country.

Tim McGraw

#90. Well, first of all, what we [in USA] need to understand is the middle class is what makes us different and exceptional. Every country has rich people, but what has made us different throughout history is that we have this broad-based vibrant middle class.

Marco Rubio

#91. I grew up in the suburbs, a calm suburb, without tension, with working-class and middle-class people mixed together.

JR

#92. If you go and stop people at a supermarket and ask them for their receipt and say, 'Hey how much did you just spend?' middle class shoppers have no idea. The poor know what they just spent.

Sendhil Mullainathan

#93. The kind of people I myself represent in parliament; salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on, these are, in a political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious.

Robert Menzies

#94. Vishram is a building like the people living in it, middle class to its core. Improvement or failure, it is incapable of either extremity.

Aravind Adiga

#95. Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs, fraternal, service, and nationality organizations. They are organizations and people that must be worked
with as one would work with any other part of our populations - with respect, understanding, and sympathy.

Saul Alinsky

#96. I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.

John McGahern

#97. We will talk about the contrast between both parties' nominees and our desire to continue to build on our success in helping people reach the middle class.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz

#98. Middle-class people are becoming desperate. It can cause a moral man to break bad.

Giancarlo Esposito

#99. Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.

Robert Reich

#100. With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.

Howard Schultz