Richard Quest Quotes

Language does not make one an elite.

In India, if you are from the elite, dogs are extremely important. The breed of the dog indicates your wealth, that you are westernized. The cook, another human being, is on a much lower level than your dog. You see this all the time.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction.

The sole purpose of a crown is to make anyone not wearing one feel like an insignificant pauper. They're obscene to the point of satire.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

At dinner parties I sit below the salt now. There are a lot of interesting people there.

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups.

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.

In terms of the class structure that you see so much in European portraiture, I don't think one feels that in America in the 21st century. But we have these other kinds of social structures now, like celebrity, who establish new hierarchies.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

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.'

Hollywood is like a really sad, grown up version of high school where people get labeled as 'cool,' 'not cool,' 'jock,' 'bombshell,' 'quirky'... it's like a caste system. You're either in, or you're out.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Social distinctions tend to matter only at your own level and above.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.

I think snobbery is one of the oldest customs in the world, and the rich will always find ways to rank each other and make themselves feel more special than others.

'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.

Class is more important than a game.

If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.