Famous quotes containing the words middle class, middle, class and/or speakers:
“Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves “oppressed,” no one would have taken them seriously.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. The guilt of English then must be recognized and appreciated before its continued use can be advocated.”
—Njabulo Ndebele (b. 1948)