Irrfan Khan Quotes

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

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

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

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

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.

The great families have their privileges.

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.

Davos is probably the world's most elite society, but it dresses itself up as a non-elite event. Don't be fooled. You must wear a specially coloured badge, which shrieks your status to others.

Outside of the family, education is the greatest determinant of social mobility.

Class still matters in Britain today.

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?

The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply hobbies or minor influences. They are hugely important in the affirmation of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction of those differences.

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.

You can't not have feelings about country clubs, whichever side you're on.

In terms of the class structure that you see so much in European portraiture, I don't think one feels that in America in the 21st century. But we have these other kinds of social structures now, like celebrity, who establish new hierarchies.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

I try to not be or associate with elitists.

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.