Thorstein Veblen Quotes

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

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

I didn't want to look distinguished; I wanted to look fun, and also to fade into the street, into the King's Road. If I don't fade into a room at White's, that's fine. My father was chairman of Brooks' and the Beefsteak, and I was brought up in that life, and it bores me rigid.

'Posh' is not really political. I didn't want to aim a brickbat at the system. Or to bash Old Etonians. It was always the class and privilege aspect of that world that I was most drawn to. There is something endlessly fascinating about imagining something you could never be involved in.

Money doesn't buy class.

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

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

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

I know places you better speak low if you've been to college. Men will come across the room and cold-deck you if you hold your glass wrong.

We didn't do cotillions or anything. My family made fun of the pageants.

Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.

Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.

There are only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic classes.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

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

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

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

The idea is not to please the most amount of people. Growing up in Versailles, the idea was to please the least amount of people.

The bourgeois are other people.

I've never felt entirely comfortable in high society. I'm more comfortable talking to the bar staff than the super-rich. I don't really get what makes them tick.

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

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