Judith Flanders Quotes

It's a very ancient culture, British culture. You can't be seen to be too wealthy, and you certainly can't be seen to be giving away any of your wealth either because that's sort of vulgar, too. It's funny, that, because in New York, if you are wealthy, you have to be philanthropic to be successful.

I remember when I was younger, older folks would say to me, 'There are three things you don't talk about at a dinner party: religion, politics, and money.' But I think the truth is quite the opposite.

When you go to that other country you realize that in France and in England, you don't ask somebody what they do for a living when you meet someone. A lot of the obvious things, the shortcuts we take in America - in America you can talk about money all you want. You can ask how much they make, rent they pay, how much their house costs and how much their car costs, and they'll feel comfortable telling you. But it's scandalous to ask anyone in England or France a question like that.

The show is like an Edwardian play - emotional life gets stepped on for the sake of accepted manners, and that's terrific for actors to play in.

I was raised not to talk about money. It was considered impolite.

We don't kiss in public. It's not done.

Sex is the ersatz or substitute religion of the 20th Century.

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money. They talk about interesting things at dinner parties.

I think in this, definitely, because you are feeling how it felt to live in a completely different time. The mannerisms and the way that people behaved was quite different.

Being a Southerner, I'm interested in sex, violence, religion and all the things that make life interesting.

We were talking about the kissing in the movie just recently. Clearly, it's pretty challenging material, but Ang said two men herding sheep was far more sexual than two men having sex on screen.

My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to the pervasive class consciousness of the place and time.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

She kindly laments that I am not of the party, and to be sure I honour great ladies, and I admire great wits, but I am of the same opinion in regard to assemblies that is held concerning oysters, that they are never good in a month that has not the letter R in it.

In America, sex is preached; in France, it is done.

The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.

I've always told my children that Americans will tell you pretty much anything, but that convention dictates that we don't like to talk money or politics.

Middle-class Americans have added an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt not judge.

The factors that are the long-term influences on opinion in this country are education, social and economic background, and religion. Those are the great constants. People's basic attitudes change very little.

Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum.