Walter Kirn Quotes

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

What's a good metaphor for a Harvard student? A talking, gold-plated pile of manure, wearing a fleece.

Apparently there are some things so stupid only someone from Harvard could say them.

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

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.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokerage business.

For better or worse, the people who become leaders and decision makers in politics, law and business are going to come from schools like Princeton.

I went to boarding school, and then I went to Oxford, and I know how easy it is for certain groups of people to become wholly insulated from ordinary life.

I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings.

Because I have a little bit more, that means I'm better than you? No. Unacceptable.

It's one of my biggest internal struggles - the whole schooling system in London and the fact that my kids are going to a posh school. It freaks me out.

I try to not be or associate with elitists.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

I've never been aware of the difference between so-called posh actors and working-class actors.

I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.

One time at the University of Colorado, at a faculty dinner, this professor said to me, 'Well, my goodness, a boy from Appa-lay-chee-a with a Ph.D!' The dinner was in her house. And I said, 'My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing, but they had more books in their house than you do.' I was a little insulted by the Appa-lay-chee-a business.

Never mind, dear, we're all made the same, though some more than others.

I was in that part of the class that made the top half possible.

I don't come from an Ivy League school or anywhere else.

I've had to spend an awful lot of my life trying to pretend I'm not posh. Although once I open my mouth, I rather let things out the bag.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

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