Dennis Skinner Quotes

Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner.

My parents came from working-class, small-peasant, farm-labourer backgrounds and had made the grade during the fascist years; my father came out of the army as a captain.

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

I was born in Montreal and came from a lower-middle-class family.

I still consider myself working class. I know my circumstances have changed dramatically since I was growing up back in Birkenhead.

There's very few people - like Shakespeare - who, no matter what, were gonna do what they did. For the rest of us, there's a lot of events that have to happen in order for things to end up the way they are.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

I would describe myself as having a healthy income, but I sure wouldn't describe the son of a postmaster and an encyclopedia saleswoman as upper class, by any stretch of the imagination. I would describe myself as decidedly middle class. I think I'm extremely fortunate.

My family wasn't involved in the college. They were more of just your 'white trash' kind of family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through.

I work hard, and I haven't done badly in life. But I pretty much came from very modest roots... I go home on my train; I cut my own grass... I don't have anything against people that are more elite, but it's just not who I am or what I'm about.

I didn't come from a council estate like a lot of the lads do.

My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read 'Reader's Digest', listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.

You can't kid the public. When they see me they see I'm just a kid off a council estate - no more, no less.

That's one thing you Americans take for granted, you know? That you can grow up, you know, not so good circumstances, and you can move. Just because you are born in rural Arkansas, whatever, that doesn't define who you are.

My mother was from a middle-class background.

We lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves.

Working class people vote Tory because they think it makes them look a bit posh.

I come from a blue collar background.

Not everybody has the chance to grow up on an island.

Just because someone doesn't have a silver spoon in their mouth doesn't mean they can't be highly intelligent.

I come from a middle-class family in Gwalior.

Football is generally a working-class sport, and because of the fact I went to private school and was brought up slightly differently, people think that makes me a different person.

My dad was working class.

I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class.

As a kid, my dad moved us to the upper town, which was in a higher class of people, and we would see the lower town below. Every day, we could see where we came from and where we were now.