Derren Brown Quotes

... I'm much closer to the people at the bottom than the people at the top, and the latter won't forgive me for it.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Class still matters in Britain today.

Unfortunately, some people go to a restaurant, and they aren't really there to enjoy themselves. They're there because they think they deserve to be there or because they can just afford it.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because they live in this bubble of immense wealth and privilege and no matter what's going on around them they have a singular purpose to maintain their rank and to impress others.

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.

Each class of society has its own requirements; but it may be said that every class teaches the one immediately below it; and if the highest class be ignorant, uneducated, loving display, luxuriousness, and idle, the same spirit will prevail in humbler life.

We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

They, the conservatives, are the real outsides, they tell us, gazing with disgust upon the ludicrous manners of the high and mighty. Or, they tell us, they are rough-and-ready proles, laughing along with us at the efforts of our social "betters" to reform and improve us. That they are often, in fact, people of privilege doing their utmost to boost the fortunes of a political party that is the traditional tool of the privileged is a contradiction that does not trouble them.

We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

I don't think that coming from a privileged background makes you this monster who doesn't feel things.

Language does not make one an elite.

I deeply detest social distinction and snobbery, and in that lies my strong aversion to titular honours.

Status based on wealth is an old-fashioned idea; I find it repugnant, actually.

Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.