34 Social class Quotes

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

Rich kids gave us their old clothes. They were the best clothes we ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.

Perhaps the rhinos and she-crocodiles whose gyrations between Mortimer's and East Hampton gives us our vision of social eminence today are content to entrust their faces to Andy Warhol's mingily cosmetic Polaroidising, but one would bet they would rather go to Sargent.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.... On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.

People from my sort of background needed Grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.

'Papa is a preferable mode of address,' observed Mrs General. 'Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company - on entering a room, for instance - Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.

We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master. The governess is to have every one of God's gifts; she is to do that which the mother herself is incapable of doing; but our son must not degrade himself by marrying the governess, nor our daughter the tutor, though she might marry the medical man.

For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen ... than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.

I expect you'll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That's what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behaviour.

Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it. We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the scum very superior.

La faute des hommes superieurs est de depenser leurs jeunes annees a se rendre dignes de la faveur. Pendant qu'ils thesaurisent, leur force est la science pour porter sans effort le poids d'une puissance qui les fuit; les intrigants, riches de mots et depourvus d'idees, vont et viennent, surprennent les sots, et se logent dans la confiance des demi-niais.

In case you haven't noticed, we:dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake.

Unlike storybook heroes and heroines but like many actual heroes and heroines, she was something of a social outcast. (As Simone Weil noted, it was the people with irregular and embarrassing histories who were often the heroes of the Resistance in the Second World War; the proper middle-class people may have felt they had too much to lose.)

Et ne savez-vous plus qu'il n'est princes ni rois Qu'elle daigne egaler a ses moindres bourgeois?

Night makes no difference 'twixt the Priest and Clerk; Joan as my Lady is as good i' the dark.

All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes - and woman accepts the proposal! - To vary that old, old saying a little bit - I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company!

Kenneth: If you're so hot, you'd better tell me how to say she has ideas above her station. Brian: Oh, yes, I forgot. It's fairly easy, old boy. Elle a des idees au-dessus de sa gare.

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

Trinny Woodall knows everyone in Belgravia who earns more than ?10 million a year so she got on the phone and the rest of us just went to the pub, it was great!

I spoke to my young host: 'If you would, tell me the meaning of the bronze figure in the shape of shameful parts hanging from the man's belt. I had seen a number of them at court when I was living in a cage, but as I was almost always in the company of the Queen's daughters, I was afraid I might show disrespect to the women and their social status if I brought up such a gross subject of conversation in their presence. 'Here, neither females nor males are so ungrateful as to blush at the sight of what has given them being; and virgins are not ashamed to like to see us wear the only thing that goes by that name, as a token of mother nature. 'The sash that honors that man carries a medallion in the form of a virile member. It is the sign of a nobleman and distinguishes the noble from the commoner.' I admit that this paradox seemed so outlandish that I could not keep from laughing at it. 'This custom seems quite extraordinary to me,' I said to my young host, 'because in our world the mark of nobility is to wear a sword.' He replied calmly, 'O little man, how insane the nobles of your world must be if they pride themselves on a tool used by executioners, one that is made only to destroy and that is, in the end, the sworn enemy of all that lives. And they hide, on the contrary, a part of the body without which we would not exist, one that is the Prometheus of every animal and tirelessly repairs the weaknesses of nature! How unfortunate a country is where the marks of generation are ignominious and those of annihilation are honorable! And you call that member one of the 'shameful parts', as though anything were more glorious than to give life and anything more infamous than to take it away.'

...capitalism is basically a system where everything is for sale, and the more money you have, the more you can get. And, in particular, that's true of freedom. Freedom is one of the commodities that is for sale, and if you are affluent, you can have a lot of it. It shows up in all sorts of ways. It shows up if you get in trouble with the law, let's say, or in any aspect of life it shows up. And for that reason it makes a lot of sense, if you accept capitalist system, to try to accumulate property, not just because you want material welfare, but because that guarantees your freedom, it makes it possible for you to amass that commodity. [...] what you're going to find is that the defense of free institutions will largely be in the hands of those who benefit from them, namely the wealthy, and the powerful. They can purchase that commodity and, therefore, they want those institutions to exist, like free press, and all that.

And this is good old Boston, The home of the bean and the cod. Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God.

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

There is only nobility of birth, only nobility of blood. When one speaks of 'aristocrats of the spirit,' reasons are usually not lacking for concealing something. As is well known, it is a favorite term among ambitious Jews. For spirit alone does not make noble. Rather, there must be something to ennoble the spirit. What then is required? Blood.