John Dunne Quotes

Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.

Class is more important than a game.

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.

I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don't like connecting with them.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?

I've got to be high class... Which is sad, because I like bars.

In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

… an army of Gatsbys wanting not to overturn the social order but only to belong to the upper crust.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

I had been in a film, playing a young British aristocrat. My wife told me that she was invited to a dinner and she invited me to dinner and the hostess had seen me and said, 'You cannot bring him.' but I think that I've done enough to shatter the image.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

Joanna points her camera at a section of society unused to having cameras pointed at it. But I don't know about categorizing them in terms of class; I'm a bit wary of that. My dad is the son of a shipbuilder.

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

And understand: class differences will not save you.

We're a phenomenally snobby society, and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

There'll always be that prep in me that I can't seem to get rid of.

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

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.