Lillian Hellman Quotes

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

I trust no rich man who is officiously kind to a poor man.

I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.

Class still matters in Britain today.

The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Everybody wants to talk about black and white, when the situation is really about rich people against poor people.

When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he's saving a parking place.

There are a lot of people who were born into immense privilege who pretend that they weren't.

There's always been a nasty strain of class prejudice ingrained in the condemnation of football's 'undeserving rich,' as if the working class is uniquely susceptible to being corrupted by money, and as if they deserve their wealth less than those born to it.

Inverted snobbery is just as dangerous as snobbery itself, you know - that pride in having nothing.

I have a class prejudice - against the upper class, which is foolish.

When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lakeshore Drive, it's hospitality.

The rich are not very nice. That's why they're rich.

We have a new class in this country: the deserving rich. ... The deserving rich do nice things for each other. Comforting the unafflicted is something that comes naturally to them.

The bias against the show is purely elitist. We're all like the people on the show - the difference is that some of us speak better, or were born richer. There's nothing that happens on my show that rich people don't experience.

If you are poor, shun association with him who measures men with the yardstick of riches.

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.

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

In all the world, rich people are very unpopular.

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

I think clever people think that poor people are stupid.

When I was a child, I didn't fly - we couldn't afford to fly. Flying was for rich people.