James Fenimore Cooper Quotes

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Of all classes the rich are the most noticed and the least studied.

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

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

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

No person ought to be in a worse condition when born under what is called a state of civilization, than he would have been had he been born in a state of nature

I spent time in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, and in the projects of Chicago. I've been to State dinners with Presidents. I met the Queen of England on a beach in Anguilla. No one is any more valuable or important than you are. No one is more important than your family and your friends.

I am not arguing for a utopian society; equal opportunity for all, though ideal, is unrealistic.

I think class is still an issue in this country.

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

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

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

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

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

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.

He that despises his neighbor's happiness because he wears a worsted cap or a leather apron, he that struts immeasurably above the lower size of the people, and pretends to adjust the rights of the men by the distinctions of fortune

Equality ... is the result of human organization.... We are not born equal.

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.

... all good Americans, while verbally asking for nothing but equal rights, ... interpret the phrase so that equal rights become equivalent to special rights.