Mel Giedroyc Quotes

Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity.

Though, with the ascendancy of Louis, the political power of the nobles finally came to an end, France remained, in the whole complexion of her social life, completely aristocratic.

I don't understand all about New York society. It's only when they are in trouble that I'm really interested.

I am a limousine liberal.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.

Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in Style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.

TED is certainly a gathering of an incredibly eclectic, incredibly interesting community, but it's also an elite community - at least an important portion comes from that global 1%.

I never like the TV or movie Harvard characters. The fact of the matter is that most people who go to Harvard went to public schools and weren't in final clubs. I didn't even know that final clubs existed until I was a senior.

In Europe there's the upper crust, and these are long, historically families and social systems that have certain established rules that's harder to break into.

People are fascinated by the rich: Shakespeare wrote plays about kings, not beggars.

The whole idea of hobknobbing and schmoozing and the concept of an "elite" class of celebrities better than the common people has always made my stomach turn.

It's very difficult, historically, to define what an elite is. But whatever it is, people are very angry at that idea, I think, not so much because of wealth or privilege as much as attitude that the populous masses, if I could use that overused term, feel that a particular government or cultural group is not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

I grew up in the 1920s and 1930s in a nouveau riche world, where money was spent wildly, and I'm still living in one!... The private schools are all jammed with long waiting lists; the clubs -- all the old clubs -- are jammed with long waiting lists today; the harbors are clogged with yachts; there has never been a more material society than the one we live in today.... Where is this 'vanished world' they talk about? I don't think the critics have looked out the window!

If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it.

Where fashion in clothes, bodily adornment, and music are concerned, it is the underclass that increasingly sets the pace. Never before has there been so much downward cultural aspiration.

Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.

All people seem to be divided into'ordinary'and 'extraordinary'. The ordinary people must lead a life of strict obedience and have no right to transgress the law because?theyare ordinary.Whereas the extraordinary people have the right to commit any crime they like and transgress the law in any way just because they happen to be extraordinary.

The very rich and the very social are, often, the very stuffy.

At college my three main interests were - in descending order of importance - a steady supply of recreational drugs, a 2-S draft deferment, and overthrowing the Nixon administration.

There was no one really like John Bender at my high school.

Spurn not the nobly born with love affected; nor treat with virtuous scorn the well connected.

They were...well, Beautiful People! - not 'students', 'clerks', 'salesgirls', 'executive trainees' - Christ, don't give me your occupation-game labels! We are Beautiful People, ascendant from your robot junkyard.

Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.