John Updike Quotes

Class still matters in Britain today.

What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

We have this kind of revolving door, we don't have a permanent class of millionaires in America like a lot of other countries.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.

My job is to raise issues relating to class in Ireland.

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.

There seems to be an idea abroad in this land as well as in others, that a certain class of people are for the purpose of producing servants for another class of people, and that this servant-producing class has no right to give their children an education that is calculated to elevate them above the position of their parents. We are not in sympathy with this idea.

Our rich people are not an ethnic minority. A poor person in Tennessee or Arkansas can say, "I'm not wealthy, but maybe my son or my daughter can grow up to be Bill Gates, or Bill Clinton." That's absolutely not true in countries like Zimbabwe, or Burma, or Indonesia, or Bolivia, where the majority of the people look around and they say, "Everybody who's rich belongs to a different ethnic group.

We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.

I take much of the attacks and the criticism toward me as being very class-based, but as Americans we don't like to acknowledge that reality.

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

I don't like class distinction, and there is far too much of that in England.

We live in a very classist society, and it's sad and depressing.

Class is a big issue here. And some people get picked on more than others. I think we probably do. I mean, it doesn't help that we wear waistcoats and tweed the whole time. But there is a reverse snobbishness in England towards that sort of stuff. And I think that's one of the reasons we really enjoy America, 'cos we're classless.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

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.

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

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