Andrew Neil Quotes

If education does not create a need for the best in life, then we are stuck in an undemocratic, rigid caste society.

There seems to be an idea abroad in this land as well as in others, that a certain class of people are for the purpose of producing servants for another class of people, and that this servant-producing class has no right to give their children an education that is calculated to elevate them above the position of their parents. We are not in sympathy with this idea.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

Because of the British Welfare State …, I was never hungry…. The schools I attended were free and actually acted as ladders of mobility for those randomly given the skills in the genetic lottery of life to climb them.

There are lots of great educationalists out there who really care about social mobility.

Outside of the family, education is the greatest determinant of social mobility.

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.

Our aristocracy, unlike that of Europe, is open to all comers.

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.

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

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

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.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness.

We once had a society stratified by bloodlines, in which the Protestant Establishment was in one class, immigrants were in another and African-Americans were in another. Now we live in a society stratified by education. In many ways this system is more fair, but as the information economy matures, we are learning it comes with its own brutal barriers to opportunity and ascent.

In this respect, higher education is now causing most of the growing inequality and strengthening class structure of the United States.

America is a meritocracy.

Growing up in Middlesbrough I was taught to be resilient and competitive. My teachers made us believe that just because kids were at private school up the road, it didn't mean they were better than us.

Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.

I don't believe in private education.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

Class still matters in Britain today.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.