James M. Barrie Quotes

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

Choose equality …. Inequality has the natural and necessary effect … of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

The ignorance of the working class and the superior intelligence of the privileged class are superstitions fostered by ... universities and churches, and by all the centers of privilege.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs;

There is only one class of men, the privileged class

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

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

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

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.

Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

The preposterous distinctions of rank, which render civilization a curse, by dividing the world between voluptuous tyrants and cunning envious dependents, corrupt, almost equally, every class of people, because respectability is not attached to the discharge of the relative duties of life, but to the station…

In a superior civilization, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste... would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

At the moment we have a ruling class that has one law and the people the other.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

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

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.