Bourgeois Quotes

Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital , in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit .

If every one of those good words - liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, human rights - has been called "bourgeois", what on earth does that leave for us?

The fact is, working stiffs with few opportunities and scant education are generally too busy getting by to engage in revolutionary projects to remake society. And history, in fact, shows us that terrorism is generally a bourgeois endeavor.

The ferment here [Holland] has made terrifying progress and if it is not stopped, it is to be feared that it may cause an explosion which will have incalculable consequences…. The patriots themselves … have judged that it is possible to destroy the Anglo-Stadholderian government only by mobilizing the bourgeois. They in their turn are led on by the impetus since they hear only of tyranny on the one hand and liberty on the other.

Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.

If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?

No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!

The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.

Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed? ... Can you, sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it.

I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.

The much abused “shopkeepers” have abolished slavery and serfdom, made woman the companion of man with equal rights, proclaimed equality before the law and freedom of thought and opinion, declared war on war, abolished torture, and mitigated the cruelty of punishment. What cultural force can boast of similar achievements?

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept

… in order to emerge from a state of nullity, the [Dutch] bourgeois are asking to take part in government; the most extreme among them wish to participate in all deliberations on public matters …. The more moderate ask only to elect their regents and to have representatives to watch over the maintenance of their rights …

The man of culture finds the whole past relevant; the bourgeois and the barbarian find relevant only what has some pressing connection with their appetite.

I had begun to abandon bourgeois style of dress. The modern hippies are no pioneers at marking themselves out by unusual apparel …

The Dutch patriots and revolutionaries are not vagabonds, libertines, rogues who are armed and led on to pillage. Rather, they are magistrates of the towns in opposition to other magistrates … peaceful bourgeois, honest merchants, wealthy manufacturers and some of the best soldiers … the richest among them supporting the poorest.

You've done the bourgeois thing, perhaps, but let's not call that love.

Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor?

If the feudal knight was the clearest embodiment of society in the early Middle Ages, and the "bourgeois" under Capitalism, the educated person will represent society in the post-capitalist society in which knowledge has become the central resource.

For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.

Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism!

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

D.H. Lawrence had the impression – that psychoanalysis was shutting sexuality up in a bizarre sort of box painted with bourgeois motifs, in a kind of rather repugnant artificial triangle, thereby stifling the whole of sexuality as a production of desire so as to recast it along entirely different lines, making of it a ‘dirty little secret’, a dirty little family secret, a private theater rather than the fantastic factory of nature and production