William Gilbert Quotes

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.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

In this country there is no rank but rank mutton.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

The great families have their privileges.

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.