Guy Debord Quotes

I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don't like connecting with them.

Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?

Class is more important than a game.

These people—the employed, the somewhat privileged—are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.

I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they're better than other people. You're damn right we're better. We're better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. . . .we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we'll look them in the eye without apology.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected.

In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than the privileges of class.

Charity has always been a expression of the guilty consciences of a ruling class.

All the old history was written for the amusement of the ruling classes. The lower classes couldn't read, and their rulers didn't care about remembering what happened to them.

When aristocrats pretend they're common people -- they get common!

We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

The conclusion you can draw from these characteristics is that you have an uneven development of class activity and an uneven development of class consciousness in the working class.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

I don't think you can get any more working class than me. Everyone seems posh to me.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.