Theo

“As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table.”
― Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848

“As one would expect of tourists, they tried to find poverty colourful,”
― Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition

“As philosopher Aldo Tassi points out, there is no performative person that preexists the person wearing a mask: “There is no role that stands ‘behind’ all our other roles and defines what we ‘really’ are, no more than there is an act of knowing (a knowing that) that stands ‘behind’ the acts of knowing and defines the possession of knowledge (knowing how)” (Tassi 1993, 207).”
― Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

“The bourgeoisie of the third quarter of the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly ‘liberal’, not necessarily in a party sense (though as we have seen Liberal parties were prevalent), as in an ideological sense. They believed in capitalism, in competitive private enterprise, technology, science and reason. They believed in progress, in a certain amount of representative government, a certain amount of civil rights and liberties, so long as these were compatible with the rule of law and with the kind of order which kept the poor in their place. They believed in culture rather than religion, in extreme cases substituting the ritual attendance at opera, theatre or concert for that at church. They believed in the career open to enterprise and talent, and that their own lives proved its merits.”
― Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875