Kevin Ayers Quotes

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

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

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.

I don't think old posh is as intimidating as new posh, is it?

Britain's is traditionally a rigid class society.

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

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace; and America is just ourselves with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

There are three social classes in America: upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class.

Language does not make one an elite.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

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

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

How rich our German life is compared to France or England: what an abundance of social types and customs with completely different origins... Germany is a world, whereas England and France, with their stereotypically divided three social classes, are but enlarged villages... what a stage for a Balzac.

I don't like a class system. I don't like the idea of being in a different class than other people.

There are only two classes - first class and no class.

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.