Harry Graf Kessler Quotes

If I wasn't doing this, I'd be in school studying political science or socioeconomic something. I love visiting different cultures and finding out how they make up a society.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

If you look at Charles Dickens's time, there were so many different levels of society and everybody understood their place in it, it was that complex and simple. I'm not sure we have that now.

The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

I've been with all walks of life... All people from all status.

Coming out of university, one of my obsessions was that in the novels I was reading, they seemed to be portraying a world that had a social fabric. People knew each other in 'War and Peace.' They went to all the same balls. These were societies with tightly wound, woven, social textures.

Class is really interesting to me, maybe because I'm from England where there is a pretty hideous, deep-rooted obsession with class. I don't like the obsession with class, but it certainly interests me.

Growing up in inner-city neighborhoods, there's a particular structure, which I'm sure is true of most social contexts. The type of person you are determines the role you play.

Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

England is so defined, the class system, your education. I think what was unique about the Canterbury scene.

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

I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It's not what we do here in America. I don't think there's anything called 'middle class values' that are different from the values of other people in this country.

Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

If we can't understand the Afghan family, we can't understand Afghanistan.

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

The hierarchy of class in London was rigid. It was like a religion. It still is to a certain extent.

My parents knew a wider range of people than most, and so we had actors, journalists, politicians, planters, sportsmen and women and business folk all coming in and out of the places we lived in. Although my parents were not wealthy, they lived a legendary and amazingly cosmopolitan life.

The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.

Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

I've sort of been an anthropologist of modern America, in a non-academic way. Whether it's Marines or Tupperware salesladies, high end audiophiles or bike couriers, I'm fascinated by the hallmarks of the American tribe.