Piet Mondrian Quotes

The fight is over two fundamentally different ideas about the nature of America. On one side are those who believe that that every hardworking person should be able to rise. On the other are those who believe that wealthy white men should always rule over a permanent class of workers.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.

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

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

Brahmins cannot hope to claim a high and superior status forever. Times are changing. They have to come down.

Tory society is a closed society, in which birth and wealth have priority.

The status quo is never happy when things become a meritocracy.

I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.

Class still matters in Britain today.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

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

Language does not make one an elite.

I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.

'Downton Abbey' is a pageant, a cavalcade of a time when being born right is the first and most irrevocable career move, and in which an older order - whose passing 'Downton's' creator, Julian Fellowes, clearly mourns - is submerging in icy seas as surely as a grand and extravagant ocean liner.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

There are only two classes - first class and no class.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that's rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

In this country there is no rank but rank mutton.

If you try and level society, then nobody will do anything.