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.
Abdullah II of Jordan
Ten years ago I said, you know, my goal is to be able to get food on the table. What I'm trying to say by that is trying to create a vibrant, capable and effective middle class. The quicker and stronger that we can be able to do this, the easier it is for political reform to move forward.
The more I support with my economic plans the building of a middle class, the quicker they're going to turn around and say, 'Hey, we want a bigger say in things.' So, I knew what I was getting into right at the beginning. It's the right thing to do.
The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.
Adam Davidson
We had a certain kind of really big prestige among, I suppose not just intellectual folk, but a sort of nice middle class intelligent folk of a very urban nature.
Adolph Green
Part of the middle class promise is that, after a lifetime of hard work, you'll be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Medicare was established to secure that promise.
Al Franken
Middle class families are struggling to send their sons and daughters to school. For many Americans, a college education is essential to future success.
Albio Sires
Rather than address the priorities of the middle class, the Ryan budget is an attack on American seniors, students, workers, and families - all for the sake of protecting loopholes for the wealthy and corporations that ship jobs overseas.
For the better part of my life, I was always trying to manufacture somehow what I would consider 'living.' Because I grew up sort of upper-middle class and I didn't relate so much to that as a life, and I wanted to really find 'living.'
Alex Ebert
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
If, if more stimulus means more tax cuts to small businesses, if, if more stimulus means middle class tax cuts, then I'm for it.
Alexi Giannoulias
I learned really early on that I had to treat it as if it were a real job. This might be my middle class background - the Irish work ethic, which isn't quite the same as the Protestant work ethic - but still, it's, 'Get a job and show up every day. Be there. And don't complain. Who do you think you are: you're nobody special; go to work.'
Alice McDermott
'Middle class' used to mean having two children and sending them to high-quality public schools, or even occasionally to private schools. It meant new brown Stride Rite Mary Janes with little purple and silver flowers when the old shoes were pinching the toes.
Alissa Quart
The middle class is a group defined by more than just money: it also leans on credentials, education, aspirations, assets, and, of course, household income.
While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.
The people who talk about the middle class aren't upholding their interests in the legislature.
There are caste systems in American cities: Many are marginalized to the edges of urban centers due to real estate costs; price tags seem to lurk around human encounters; there's a cult of overwork in the middle class; workers at your local manicurist, your local fast casual restaurant, are exploited.
Because I came from the working class, I still identify with them. I don't identify with the middle class.
Allison Anders
Income inequality has become so prevalent in the U.S. that examples of its negative impact on the middle class are as common as Kanye West saying something cringeworthy in the media.
Ana Kasparian
If the federal government is so concerned with why people are deciding against having kids, maybe they should consider how little support and protection the middle class gets when it comes to being parents. Paid leave would be a good start, and increasing wages would also help.
I think Millennials are more progressive, more socially progressive, much more concerned about economic issues that impact the poor and middle class, and so that basically shows me that the Democratic party will have a bright future.
Crippling student loan debt doesn't just affect those who took out loans to get an education. It harms all of us because we can't have a healthy economy without a strong middle class to stimulate it.
You know, you cut taxes for the rich sometimes and it sits in a bank account. You cut taxes for the middle class, they will spend the money.
The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for people who aim to become middle class if possible.
The difference between Justin Trudeau and myself is I have had real world experience. I haven't just read books on the middle class and what life is like for them. I've lived it.
The union movement has been the best middle class job creating program that America has ever had, and it doesn't cost the government a dime.
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.
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.
What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.
When you grow up middle class, you just always feel like you've got to be working, or you won't be able to pay the bills.
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. And there's something wildy decadent about the young-star lifestyle, and I just don't really see the point.
I only went along to youth theatre with a friend when I was young to try to make myself a bit more sociable. But the whole thing was quite sore; it really hurt me trying to get into drama school. It was a world I knew nothing about - it was very middle class; all that usual stuff. But I was young, determined, and I just went for it.
The top end are still making bucket loads while maintaining the illusion of the American dream: that if you work hard enough, you can make a fortune. Meanwhile, the working and middle classes have been hollowed out of the system.
When we are not extracting wealth from nature, we are extracting it from the working and middle classes.
I grew up in the middle class.
Mr Trump is a different type of leader not burdened by rigid ideology. He does not think like a politician, nor does he talk or sanctimoniously moralise like one, making him an easy target for demonisation. However, he is an empathetic person who recognises the pain of America's middle class.
Misguided economic and tax policies have hampered growth, allowing the rich to become richer while turning the middle class into the working poor.
The Americans invaded a country without understanding what eight years of a war with Iran had meant, how that traumatized Iraq. They didn't appreciate what they support for a decade of sanctions in Iraq had done to Iraq and the bitterness that it created and that it wiped out the middle class.
All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none.
At a time when the GOP is playing games with the debt limit, a member of the Supreme Court is refusing to recuse himself from matters he has a financial interest in, and middle class incomes are stagnant, many want to change the subject. I don't. This was a prank, and a silly one. I'm focused on my work.
I was born in a poor family, a lower middle class family. My father was a clerk in the forest department. I was very bad at studies. I was not very good at sports, also.
I cannot take away the fact I am a small-town boy from India, from a lower-middle class family, and was actually standing in front of De Niro - not on an equal level, but as an actor, on the same pedestal.
Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.
The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
We all have a role to play - the President, Congress, parents, students and schools - in making college affordable and keeping the middle class dream alive.
Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.
You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.
And in terms of their crown jewel legislative achievement: who knew that when asked, 'will government impose a new federal mandate requiring middle class Americans to buy health insurance whether they can afford it or not?' The answer would be 'Yes we can!'
Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.
