John L. Lewis Quotes

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

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

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?

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

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

There are only two classes - first class and no class.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

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

The fight is over two fundamentally different ideas about the nature of America. On one side are those who believe that that every hardworking person should be able to rise. On the other are those who believe that wealthy white men should always rule over a permanent class of workers.

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

It was hugely helpful to me, being South African. I have never felt uncomfortable in posh society because I don't see what it is that I'm meant to be bowing the knee about.

Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.

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.

Class still matters in Britain today.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

Language does not make one an elite.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.