Pietro Metastasio Quotes

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

I was no Marie Antoinette. I was not born to nobility, but I had a human right to nobility.

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

Character and class are character and class. Either you have it or you don't.

What a lot of people don't understand is, you can't really do nothing for power - you're either born with it or you aren't.

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

I have wondered sometimes if there are not perhaps some disadvantages in having really blue blood in one's veins, like grandmamma and me.

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

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

I wasn't born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.

Language does not make one an elite.

I hate the noise and hurry inseparable from great Estates and Titles, and look upon both as blessings that ought only to be given to fools, for 'Tis only to them that they are blessings.

Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.

It is more honorable to be raised to a throne than to be born to one. Fortune bestows the one, merit obtains the other.

I was not to the manor born.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.

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

The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee- A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy-

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

Kings! Why, what's a king? .... Is their blood purer than our own? We are all the seed of Abraham!

I'm not interested in classes ... Far be it from me to foster inferiority complexes among the workers by trying to make them think they belong to some special class.

All men are equal; it is not their birth, but virtue itself that makes the difference

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.