Miriam Margolyes Quotes

I think that in the past there has been a kind of cultural resistance to Latin because it's associated with elitism.

Britain's is traditionally a rigid class society.

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

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

Class still matters in Britain today.

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

Class is real. It can't be faked.

Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?

I'm not from the working class. I'm from the criminal class.

I don't understand why the accent you speak in has to indicate what level of intellect you have.

If someone is very upper-class, you have a stereotype of him which is probably true. If someone has a working-class accent, you have no idea who you're talking to.

You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs except in England, of course.

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.

The ‘poor white’ is actually degraded; the mountain white is a person not yet graded up.

When I started in the profession, there were very visible actors who were Scottish, Welsh, or regional. Lots of working-class-hero leading actors; it was not fashionable to sound posh. Now, I'm middle-aged; it's fashionable to sound posh if you are the generation behind me.

Just because I don't speak English with an accent anymore doesn't mean that I'm better than the people who do.

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

I think there's a certain sense of grounding that comes from not being a rich kid from a media-elite school.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

My wife thinks I have an obsession with social class. So I guess I have an obsession with social class. It probably stems from feeling like an outcast.

When I speak English, I've been told, I have this patrician way of speaking that's very irritating. It's the whole class thing.

I don't think the elite class is only speaking the good English.

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

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?

My upbringing was so middle-class and repressed. It wasn't until I was placed in Lunghua that I met anyone from any other social strata. When I did, I found them colossally vital.