Upper Middle Class Quotes:

For students today, only 10 percent of children from working-class families graduate from college by the age of 24 as compared to 58 percent of upper-middle-class and wealthy families.

- Patrick J. Kennedy

topic: Inspirational, Funny, Graduation, Students Today, Upper Middle Class

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

- Ayn Rand

topic: Future, Past, Class, Upper Class, Middle Class

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.

- Camille Paglia

topic: Party, Class, Ordinary, Democratic Party, Upper Middle Class

In China, you've got six people buying for one child. But the thing is, you've got the largest rising upper-middle class in the world.

- Angela Ahrendts

topic: Children, Class, People, Upper Middle Class

I had a happy, dramafree youth, growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. The only thing that was slightly unusual compared to most of my friends was that I was an only child... I don't think that's why my parents gave me a dummy, at least they've never copped to it.

- Jeff Dunham

topic: Children, Growing Up, Thinking, Dummy, Dallas Texas

My childhood is completely... when I look back, it was '50s in New York, upper-middle class, it was completely idyllic and golden and wonderful - sweet in every way.

- Peter Jurasik

source: Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. November 18, 2002.

topic: Sweet, New York, Class, Idyllic, Upper Middle Class

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

topic: Cutting, Thinking, Class, Upper Middle Class

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

- Judith Martin

source: Judith Martin (1982). “Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior”, Scribner

topic: Women, Class, America, Upper Class, Lower Class

Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, brutalizes our lower class.

- Matthew Arnold

source: Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.816, Delphi Classics

topic: Class, Wealth, Middle, Upper Class, Middle Class

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

- Ed Miliband

topic: Thinking, Views, Class, Upper Middle Class

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

- Holly Near

topic: Journey, Men, Class, Upper Class, Upper Middle Class

I myself am consummately middle class. We grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs in Oklahoma City, and thats very much the same ethos as what Richard Yates and John Cheever wrote about.

- Blake Bailey

topic: Oklahoma, Ethos, Class, Oklahoma City, Upper Middle Class

My greatest inspiration has to be a Thai lady called Kru Nam, 40, she is from an upper middle class family and degree educated who has chosen to dedicated her life to rescuing children. I met her just after she rescued 27 children, since then she has continued to rescue more children without money, influence and making connections.

- David Batstone

source: Source: forums.juniper.net

topic: Children, Inspiration, Class, Middle Class Family, Thai

There is quite a lot of mutual misunderstanding between the upper middle class and the working class. Reviewing what's been said about the white working class and the Democrats, I realized that there's even a lot of disagreement about who the working class IS.

- Timothy Noah

topic: Class, White, Middle, Upper Middle Class

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

source: Source: greendayminority.tumblr.com

topic: Thinking, Class, People, Upper Middle Class

I think I was raised in a solidly upper-middle class family who had really strong values and excess was not one of the things that my family put up with.

- Anne Hathaway

source: "Anne Hathaway learns from a legend in 'Prada'". The Associated Press Interview, www.today.com. June 21, 2006.

topic: Strong, Thinking, Class, Middle Class Family, Strong Values

I came from an upper-middle class home, which is always a hard cross for a country singer to bear.

- Kinky Friedman

source: Kinky Friedman (2008). “What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World”, p.102, Macmillan

topic: Country, Home, Class, Country Singer, Upper Middle Class

When well-qualified, upper middle-class blacks or Latinos or Asians move to predominantly white neighborhoods, there's what's called the tipping point. That tipping point is generally 15 percent; at 15 percent you begin to see white flight.

- Richard Benjamin

source: Source: www.motherjones.com

topic: Moving, White, Class, Tipping Point, Upper Middle Class

Poor communities, frequently communities of color but not exclusively, suffer disproportionately. If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods.

- Carol Browner

topic: Color, Class, Community, Upper Middle Class

Excellent Sheep is likely to makea lasting mark for three reasons. One, Mr. Deresiewicz spent twenty-four years in the Ivy League, graduating from Columbia and teaching for a decade at Yale.He brings the gory details. Two, the author is a striker, to put it in soccer terms. He's a vivid writer, a literary critic whose headers tend to land in the back corner of the net. Three, his indictment arrives on wheels: He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America.Mr. Deresiewicz's book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness.

- Dwight Garner

topic: Soccer, Book, Teaching, Middle Class Life, Ivy League

To me, women's lib was mainly a white, upper-middle class affair of little use to a reservation Indian woman.

- Mary Brave Bird

source: "Lakota Woman". Book by Mary Brave Bird edited by Richard Erdoes (p. 244), 1990.

topic: Class, White, Use, Upper Middle Class

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

topic: Cat, Thinking, Class, Matchboxes, Killer Instinct

I think that Indian writing in English is a really peculiar beast. I can't think of any literature - perhaps Russian literature in the nineteenth century comes close - so exclusively produced by and closely identified with a tiny but powerful ruling elite, the upper-caste, Anglophone upper middle class, and dependent for so long on book buyers and readers elsewhere.

- Pankaj Mishra

topic: Powerful, Book, Writing, Russian Literature, Upper Middle Class

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

topic: Osmosis, Class, White, Stuff Happens, Bumper

We have a new joke on the reservation: 'What is cultural deprivation?' Answer: 'Being an upper-middle class white kid living in a split-level suburban home with a color TV.'

- John Fire Lame Deer

topic: Home, Kids, Color, Upper Middle Class

I've got a fierce passion for politics but I can't stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country. I'm up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.

- Pete Doherty

source: Metro, August 25, 2006.

topic: Music, Country, Passion, Petrol, Upper Middle Class

Now let me be clear; millions of women around the world nurse their children beautifully for years without giving anybody else a hard time about it. Teat Nazis are a solely western upper-middle-class phenomenon occurring when highly ambitious women experience deprivation from outside modes of achievement.

- Tina Fey

topic: Children, Hard Times, Years, Ambitious Women, Upper Middle Class

Sloanes aren't cafe society or NYLON hedge-funders with million-pound bonuses, or London Eurotrash wearing upgraded style anglais. Ann Barr's and my original picture of them in 'The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook,' published in 1982, was of an upper-middle-class world, conservative and fairly homogeneous, united by old attitudes and institutions.

- Peter York

topic: Attitude, Class, Style, Nylon, Homogeneous

Like most lazy upper-middle-class kids, American Studies seemed like a fun way to use your knowledge of TV to get an A.

- Nick Kroll

topic: Fun, Kids, Class, Upper Middle Class

I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive... that's part of the reason I love it.

- Matt Smith

topic: Class, Physicians, Transition, Upper Middle Class

I came from an educated, upper middle-class family. My mother was a Persian and history teacher at a large high school for girls. Many of the women in my extended family and in our circle of friends were professionals. In those days, women were a vital part of the economy in Kabul. They worked as lawyers, physicians, college professors, etc., which makes the tragedy of how they were treated by the Taliban that much more painful.

- Khaled Hosseini

source: Interview with Razeshta Sethna, newslinemagazine.com. November, 2003.

topic: Girl, Mother, Teacher, Middle Class, Middle Class Family

I guess I'm also obligated to note that the experience of sex workers who are not upper/middle class/white probably have much worse conditions than anything that's portrayed commonly in media/what I experienced.

- Marie Calloway

topic: Sex, Media, Class, Upper Middle Class

I started to understand what the song could be about. The ache of nostalgia even for things we don't like, the commitment to keep moving despite that ache. It made me think of how I relate to my privilege - as a white person, as someone who grew up upper middle class.

- Erin McKeown

source: Source: therumpus.net

topic: Song, Moving, Commitment, Upper Middle Class

The American middle class, it seems to me, is looking to politicians now to satisfy a pretty basic - and urgent - level of need. Yet people in the upper middle class - with their excellent health benefits, schools, salaries, retirement plans, nannies and private afterschool programs - have journeyed so far from that level of need that, it often seems to me, they literally cannot hear what resonates with the middle class. That creates a problematic blind spot for those who write, edit or produce what comes to be known about our politicians and their policies.

- Judith Warner

topic: Retirement, Writing, School, Blind Spots, Health Benefits

Trivial details have been summoned, in part, to make a satirical point about upper-middle-class marriage-that the whole thing can slip away between the white wine and the arugula salad.

- David Denby

topic: Wine, Class, White, White Wine, Arugula

I had a happy childhood in a nice suburban area, pretty idyllic, upper middle class and very, very white. My dad is an attorney. My mother is a housewife. They had five kids in seven years: me, my brother, and three sisters. I'm the oldest. We were all very active. My mother was exhausted.

- Anthony Jeselnik

topic: Mother, Brother, Dad, Three Sisters, Idyllic

Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.

- Rebecca West

topic: Daughter, School, Class, Kitchen Sinks, Upper Middle Class

Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.

- Ludwig von Mises

source: Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

topic: Father, Class, Socialism, Upper Middle Class