Samuel West Quotes

The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.

If education does not create a need for the best in life, then we are stuck in an undemocratic, rigid caste society.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

We live in a time where it's very much in vogue, constant search for pure utopian equality, and which, on one level, is quite amusingly silly but also on another probably very important.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it.

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

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

Our aristocracy, unlike that of Europe, is open to all comers.

The Tories and the Lib Dems talk about social mobility, but, short of winning the lottery, the only way to guarantee young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to do better and to raise aspirations is through education.

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.

If you get so unequal that people believe they don't have a chance, that the field isn't level for them and their children, that puts democracy at risk.

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.

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

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

Unless we labor to help others achieve a reasonable stake in society, we may find ourselves losing the society in which we have too great a stake.

The distribution of wealth ... depends on the laws and customs of society ... what the opinions and feelings of the ruling class make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth. The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking action of dominant classes.